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zbet game City are now six games without a victory but appeared to be cruising towards three points before being stunned by the Eredivisie side, who hit them with goals from Anis Hadj Moussa, Santiago Gimenez and David Hancko to fight back from 3-0 down. Two goals from Erling Haaland, one of them a penalty, and one from Ilkay Gundogan had the 2023 European champions three up after 53 minutes as they sought the win that would help to get their ailing season back on track. FULL-TIME | A point apiece. 🩵 3-3 ⚫️ #ManCity | #UCL pic.twitter.com/6oj1nEOIwm — Manchester City (@ManCity) November 26, 2024 After the team collapsed in the closing stages, Ake called on his team-mates to show their mettle if their campaign is not to wither away. Speaking to Amazon Prime, he was asked whether he believed the the team’s problem is a mental one. “Maybe it is,” he said. “It is difficult to say. Obviously we have not been in this situation many times but this is where we have to show our character. “When everything seems to go against us and everyone is writing us off, we have to stay strong mentally, believe in ourselves and stick together. 🔢 pic.twitter.com/diyhxQXsdF — Feyenoord Rotterdam (@Feyenoord) November 26, 2024 “Every season there is a period when they write us off. We have to make sure we stay strong as a team and staff and make sure we get out of it.” The draw leaves City with work to do if they are to secure one of the eight automatic spots in the last 16 of this season’s Champions League. They are currently 15th in the table, two points outside of the top eight, and will need positive results in their next two games against Juventus and Paris St Germain to keep their hopes alive. They then face Club Brugge in their final league match on January 29. The result at least ended a run of five straight defeats in all competitions ahead of Sunday’s Premier League showdown with leaders Liverpool at Anfield. “When you are three goals up it feels like a defeat when you give up three goals at home,” said Ake. “It is tough now, a tough night, but the only thing we can do is look forward to the next one. Liverpool is a big game and it is another challenge to overcome. “(We were) 3-0 up and we played quite well and were under control, but then it all changed. “You just have to stay strong mentally. At 3-1 they then push on but I think we need to go for it a bit earlier so we could keep the pressure on them, but we stayed playing at the back and maybe invited more pressure on us. “Then when you concede the second one there is even more pressure and then we have to stay stronger mentally.”Social media users are misrepresenting a Vermont Supreme Court ruling , claiming that it gives schools permission to vaccinate children even if their parents do not consent. The ruling addressed a lawsuit filed by Dario and Shujen Politella against Windham Southeast School District and state officials over the mistaken vaccination of their child against COVID-19 in 2021, when he was 6 years old. A lower court had dismissed the original complaint, as well as an amended version. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was filed on Nov. 19. But the ruling by Vermont's high court is not as far-reaching as some online have claimed. In reality, it concluded that anyone protected under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP, Act is immune to state lawsuits. Here's a closer look at the facts. CLAIM: The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that schools can vaccinate children against their parents' wishes. THE FACTS: The claim stems from a July 26 ruling by the Vermont Supreme Court, which found that anyone protected by the PREP Act is immune to state lawsuits, including the officials named in the Politella's suit. The ruling does not authorize schools to vaccinate children at their discretion. According to the lawsuit, the Politella's son — referred to as L.P. — was given one dose of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic held at Academy School in Brattleboro even though his father, Dario, told the school's assistant principal a few days before that his son was not to receive a vaccination. In what officials described as a mistake, L.P. was removed from class and had a “handwritten label” put on his shirt with the name and date of birth of another student, L.K., who had already been vaccinated that day. L.P. was then vaccinated. Ultimately, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that officials involved in the case could not be sued. “We conclude that the PREP Act immunizes every defendant in this case and this fact alone is enough to dismiss the case,” the Vermont Supreme Court's ruling reads. “We conclude that when the federal PREP Act immunizes a defendant, the PREP Act bars all state-law claims against that defendant as a matter of law.” The PREP Act , enacted by Congress in 2005, authorizes the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a declaration in the event of a public health emergency providing immunity from liability for activities related to medical countermeasures, such as the administration of a vaccine, except in cases of “willful misconduct" that result in “death or serious physical injury.” A declaration against COVID-19 was issued on March 17, 2020. It is set to expire on Dec. 31. Federals suits claiming willful misconduct are filed in Washington. Social media users described the Vermont Supreme Court's ruling as having consequences beyond what it actually says. “The Vermont Supreme Court has ruled that schools can force-vaccinate children for Covid against the wishes of their parents,” reads one X post that had been liked and shared approximately 16,600 times as of Tuesday. “The high court ruled on a case involving a 6-year-old boy who was forced to take a Covid mRNA injection by his school. However, his family had explicitly stated that they didn't want their child to receive the ‘vaccines.’” Other users alleged that the ruling gives schools permission to give students any vaccine without parental consent, not just ones for COVID-19. Rod Smolla, president of the Vermont Law and Graduate School and an expert on constitutional law, told The Associated Press that the ruling “merely holds that the federal statute at issue, the PREP Act, preempts state lawsuits in cases in which officials mistakenly administer a vaccination without consent.” “Nothing in the Vermont Supreme Court opinion states that school officials can vaccinate a child against the instructions of the parent,” he wrote in an email. Asked whether the claims spreading online have any merit, Ronald Ferrara, an attorney representing the Politellas, told the AP that although the ruling doesn't say schools can vaccinate students regardless of parental consent, officials could interpret it to mean that they could get away with doing so under the PREP Act, at least when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines. He explained that the U.S. Supreme Court appeal seeks to clarify whether the Vermont Supreme Court interpreted the PREP Act beyond what Congress intended. “The Politella’s fundamental liberty interest to decide whether their son should receive elective medical treatment was denied by agents of the State and School,” he wrote in an email to the AP. “The Vermont Court misconstrues the scope of PREP Act immunity (which is conditioned upon informed consent for medical treatments unapproved by FDA), to cover this denial of rights and its underlying battery.” Ferrara added that he was not aware of the claims spreading online, but that he “can understand how lay people may conflate the court's mistaken grant of immunity for misconduct as tantamount to blessing such misconduct.” John Klar, who also represents the Politellas, went a step further, telling the AP that the Vermont Supreme Court ruling means that “as a matter of law” schools can get away with vaccinating students without parental consent and that parents can only sue on the federal level if death or serious bodily injury results. — Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck .House shuts down efforts to release Matt Gaetz ethics report

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BUENOS AIRES (AP) — Thiago Messi, the eldest son of the Argentina star, has made his debut in the “Newell’s Cup” tournament in the countryside city of Rosario. The 12-year-old Messi played with the No. 10 jersey of an Inter Miami youth team, which lost 1-0 on Monday to host Newell’s Old Boys in the traditional under-13 competition. The team also played Tuesday.

Messi's son debuts at Argentina youth tournament as grandparents watch

NoneFACT FOCUS: Vermont ruling does not say schools can vaccinate children without parental consentThere are few clearer signs of the destructive power that Hurricane Beryl unleashed on Barbados in July than the scene at the temporary boatyard in the capital, Bridgetown. Scores of mangled and cracked vessels sit on stacks, gaping holes in their hulls, their rudders snapped off and cabin windows broken. Yet these were the lucky ones. At least they can be repaired and put back out to sea. Many others sank, taking entire family incomes with them. When Beryl lashed Barbados, the island's fishing fleet was devastated in a matter of hours. About 75% of the active fleet was damaged, with 88 boats totally destroyed. Charles Carter, who owns a blue-and-black fishing vessel called Joyce, was among those affected. "It's been real bad, I can tell you. I had to change both sides of the hull, up to the waterline," he says, pointing at the now pristine boat in front of us. It has taken months of restoration and thousands of dollars to get it back to this point, during which time Charles has barely been able to fish. "That's my living, my livelihood, fishing is all I do," he says. "The fishing industry is mash up," echoes his friend, Captain Euride. "We're just trying to get back the pieces." Now, six months after the storm, there are signs of calmer waters. On a warm Saturday, several repaired vessels were put back into the ocean with the help of a crane, a trailer and some government support. Seeing Joyce back on the water is a welcome sight for all fishermen in Barbados. But Barbadians are acutely aware that climate change means more active and powerful Atlantic hurricane seasons - and it may be just another year or two before the fishing industry is struck again. Beryl, for example, was the earliest-forming Category 5 storm on record. Few understand the extent of the problem better than the island's Chief Fisheries Officer, Dr Shelly Ann Cox. "Our captains have been reporting that sea conditions have changed," she explains. "Higher swells, sea surface temperatures are much warmer and they're having difficulty getting flying fish now at the beginning of our pelagic season." The flying fish is a national symbol in Barbados and a key part of the island's cuisine. But climate change has been harming the stocks for years. At the Oistins Fish Market in Bridgetown, flying fish are still available, along with marlin, mahi-mahi and tuna, though only a handful of stalls are open. At one of them, Cornelius Carrington, from the Freedom Fish House. fillets a kingfish with the speed and dexterity of a man who has spent many years with a fish knife in his hands. "Beryl was like a surprise attack, like an ambush," says Cornelius, in a deep baritone voice, over the market's chatter, reggae and thwack of cleavers on chopping boards. Cornelius lost one of his two boats in Hurricane Beryl. "It's the first time a hurricane has come from the south like that, normally storms hit us from the north," he said. Although his second boat allowed him to stay afloat financially, Cornelius thinks the hand of climate change is increasingly present in the fishermen's fate. "Right now, everything has changed. The tides are changing, the weather is changing, the temperature of the sea, the whole pattern has changed." The effects are also being felt in the tourism industry, he says, with hotels and restaurants struggling to find enough fish to meet demand each month. For Dr Shelly Ann Cox, public education is key and, she says, the message is getting through. "Perhaps because we are an island and we're so connected to the water, people in Barbados can speak well on the impact on climate change and what that means for our country," she says. "I think if you speak to children as well, they're very knowledgeable about the topic." To see for myself, I visited a secondary school – Harrison College – as a member of a local NGO, the Caribbean Youth Environmental Network (CYEN), talked to members of the school's Environmental Club about climate change. The CYEN representative, Sheldon Marshall, is an energy expert who quizzed the pupils about greenhouse gases and the steps they could take at home to help reduce carbon emissions on the island. "How can you, as young people in Barbados, help make a difference on climate change?" he asked them. Following an engaging and lively debate, I asked the pupils how they felt about Barbados being on the front line of global climate change, despite having only a small carbon footprint itself. "Personally, I take a very pessimistic view," said 17-year-old Isabella Fredricks. "We are a very small country. No matter how hard we try to change, if the big countries – the main producers of pollution like America, India and China – don't make a change, everything we do is going to be pointless." Her classmate, Tenusha Ramsham, is slightly more optimistic. "I think that all great big leaps in history were made when people collaborated and innovated," she argues. "I don't think we should be completely disheartened because research, innovation, creating technology and education will ultimately lead to the future that we want." "I feel if we can communicate to the global superpowers the pain that we feel seeing this happen to our environment," adds 16-year-old Adrielle Baird, "then it would help them to understand and help us collaborate to find ways to fix the issues that we're seeing." For the island's young people, their very futures are at stake. Rising sea levels now pose an existential threat to the small islands of the Caribbean. It is a point on which the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has become a global advocate for change – urging greater action over an impending climate catastrophe in her speech at COP29 and calling for economic compensation from the world's industrialised nations. On its shores and in its seas, it feels like Barbados is under siege - dealing with issues from coral bleaching to coastal erosion. While the impetus for action comes from the island's youth, it is the older generations who have borne witness as the changes unfold. Steven Bourne has fished the waters around Barbados his whole life and lost two boats in Hurricane Beryl. As we look out at the coastline from a dilapidated beach-hut bar, he says the island's sands have shifted before his very eyes. "It's an attack from the elements. You see it taking the beaches away, but years ago you'd be sitting here, and you could see the water's edge coming upon the sand. Now you can't because the sand's built up so much." By coincidence, in the same bar where I chatted to Steven was Home Affairs Minister Wilfred Abrahams, who has responsibility for national disaster management. I put it to him that it must be a a difficult time for disaster management in the Caribbean. "The whole landscape has changed entirely," he replied. "Once upon a time, it was rare to get a Category Five hurricane in any year. Now we're getting them every year. So the intensity and the frequency are cause for concern." Even the duration of the hurricane season has changed, he says. "We used to have a rhyme that went: June, too soon; July, standby; October, all over," he tells me. Extreme weather events like Beryl have rendered such an idea obsolete. "What we can expect has changed, what we've prepared for our whole lives and what our culture is built around has changed," he adds. Fisherman Steven Bourne had hoped to retire before Beryl. Now, he says, he and the rest of the islanders have no choice but to keep going. "Being afraid or anything like that don't make no sense. Because there's nowhere for we to go. We love this rock. And we will always be on this rock."

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Syracuse coach Fran Brown and Washington State acting coach Pete Kaligis shared a heartfelt hug after their Holiday Bowl news conference on Thursday. Kaligis can certainly use all the support he can get, especially an embrace and some encouraging words from the opposing coach. No. 22 Syracuse (9-3, No. 21 CFP), led by national passing leader Kyle McCord, is a 17-point favorite according to BetMGM in Friday night’s Holiday Bowl against the depleted Cougars (8-4), whose season has nosedived since mid-November. After beating future Pac-12 opponent San Diego State 29-26 on Oct. 26 at Snapdragon Stadium, coach Jake Dickert, quarterback John Mateer and the rest of the Cougars were 7-1 and about to jump into The Associated Press Top 25. Now the Cougars are barely recognizable as they return to Snapdragon. Dickert was hired away by Wake Forest, Mateer transferred to Oklahoma and running back Wayshawn Parker left for Utah. Numerous coaches, including the offensive and defensive coordinators, are gone, and more than 20 players have entered the transfer portal. The Cougars, who lost their last three games, are a prime example of how college football’s rapidly changing landscape can dramatically affect a program. “Going into the ins-and-outs of the game tomorrow doesn’t matter,” Kaligis said. “We are who we are, we have what we have. I know that’s for both of us.” Kaligis said players who entered the portal after Dickert left can suit up Friday night. “I know we came here with 98 guys. That’s who we’re going to show up on the field with.” The state of the game Kaligis said relationships between players and coaches are more important than ever, even if there’s less time to develop trust “and coach them the right way.” “When a staff (member) leaves and guys get in the portal, it’s because of the relationships they have garnered with their position coaches. When that position coach isn’t guaranteed he’s going to be there, that’s who that young man trusts,” Kaligis said. “I’ve been doing this for a long time,” he added. “What’s been hard for me, I spent 13 years at Wyoming, I saw three graduating classes. I remember I was the longest-tenured coach there. To see them all the way through. When I came to Wazzu, I was their fourth D-line coach.” Wazzu’s slump The Cougs improved to 8-1 by beating Utah State 49-28 on Nov. 9 but then lost three straight, including to Oregon State in the de facto championship game between the two teams left in the Pac-12. They also lost to New Mexico and Wyoming, two of the Mountain West teams that weren’t invited to join the reconstituted Pac-12 starting in 2026. Airing it out McCord, who transferred from Ohio State, rewrote the Orange’s record book this season with 4,326 yards passing, 29 touchdowns and 367 completions. He’s well within range of breaking Deshaun Watson’s ACC single-season record of 4,593, which he set in 15 games in 2016. Orange goals A win will give Syracuse 10 wins for the first time since 2018 and just the third time since 2000. Brown can become the second Syracuse coach since World War II to record 10 wins in his first season, joining Paul Pasqualoni, who did it in 1991. In their final regular-season game, the Orange rallied from a 21-0 deficit for a 42-38 win against then-No. 6 Miami that knocked the Hurricanes out of ACC title contention and ended their College Football Playoff hopes. McCord threw for 380 yards and three touchdowns. “We want to go out and have a good game,” Brown said. “We have an opportunity of winning 10 games, which means you’re starting to become a successful program, right? Our players haven’t had a chance of winning a bowl game. So there’s a lot of things that are on the line for us to really be able to build our program and being able to move forward.” Series history This will be the teams’ second meeting. Syracuse beat Washington State 52-25 in 1979. ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up . AP college football: and

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This is a story about fear and anxiety. It’s also about Taash, the fire-breathing qunari companion in Dragon Age: The Veilguard . When I was playing through the game for my review , they were one of my favorite folks to have along on missions. There are various reasons why and some are just practical: I was playing a mage, so having a warrior on hand for Warrior StuffTM was useful, but I also enjoyed Taash’s snarky and practical approach to the world. Every time another party member would get lost in their own head about something, Taash’s “That’s vashedan!” would inevitably yank them back out in a fun way. Taash is also nonbinary, which is one of two axes their character conflict and development rotate around. The other is that they were born in the lands of the Qun , a religious and deeply stratified society, but they were raised in Rivain, a close-enough Mediterranean analog with a sharply contrasting culture. In both respects, Taash is presented to us as a character who feels pulled between opposing poles by these forces in their life. Taash’s mother, Shathann, is an expert in Qun history and a stern and lecturing type who seems to disapprove of everything “nontraditional” her child does, including both not being feminine enough and not following the Qun enough. My moment of fear about Taash came when I encountered a specific in-game codex entry: Taash Notes: Meeting Shadow Dragons to Talk Gender Stuff . A hefty number of codex entries involving Taash are framed as notes they take on various subjects (including one on how to set traps in the Lighthouse , which I enjoyed). Their notes on gender unlock after a conversation with Neve and Rook about Taash’s discomfort with their gender identity; the implication is that Neve hooked Taash up with trans folks in the Shadow Dragons faction who might have useful information on the subject. Unfortunately, this codex entry feels both awkward and out of place. Not necessarily harmful — there’s nothing in it that made me go “ that’s obviously untrue” or anything of the sort. That said, if this were a Mass Effect game and not a Dragon Age one, it would be extremely easy to paint this codex entry as Taash’s net search history. It has extremely strong “baby queer person googling what ‘queer’ means and writing it down” energy, because that’s basically what it is. Without an in-game internet, Taash has to rely on speaking to actual people; without in-game social media, they get their thoughts out on paper to make sense of them. Taash’s notes cover everything from what dysphoria is, to struggling with the definition of the term “nonbinary,” to uplifting testimonials from said trans NPCs about what gender means, to the literally stated “Trans woman IS woman.” Speaking from experience, and as someone who was working out their sexuality at a time when the internet was not even remotely as widely available as it is today, these are the kind of notes and scribbles I would have written, it’s true, but in the process they can come across in a very “here’s Taash’s Being Genderqueer 101 blog post” kind of way. Since Taash’s way of speaking is already relatively informal and “modern-sounding” compared to other party members, that contributes to the feeling that this is just ever so slightly out of place. Critics and fans have argued that “nonbinary,” an already modern term, needed an in-universe equivalent, which I disagree with. Harvey Randall at PC Gamer argues that instead, Veilguard ’s writers needed to establish more of how the term was situated in the DA world’s culture and history, and I do think contextualizing “nonbinary” in Thedas culture/language would have helped , but it’s not strictly speaking required . As I read through the codex entry, I had a pit-of-the-stomach feeling getting bigger with each new word. I wasn’t worried about the anti-woke crowd; one, they would hate this game regardless, and two, who cares what fools think? What worried me was what my fellow queer players would have to say about it, because in my imagination, the possibility of a deeply negative reaction loomed large. That was informed by my own reading, too; because the relevant codex entry had a somewhat “101-level” tone — and was delivered in a codex entry and not through, say, a scene where Taash interacts directly with those trans NPCs about this — made me worried that queer players would feel it didn’t go far enough, or would believe it to be targeted at non-queer players instead. However, a large part of my anxiousness came from personal experience. In the summer of 2011, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the MIT Game Lab , which was at the time the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab. Our partnership with the Singapore Media Development Authority meant that every summer, Singaporean game dev students from our Singaporean sister lab would come to Boston, split into teams alongside local students from MIT, Berklee College of Music, and Rhode Island School of Design, and make games in an intensive eight-week program. Specifically, they would make games that furthered the research of academics working in games, who applied to have their projects chosen. That summer, one team was making a game for my research. The study sought to understand a team’s process as they built a game with a very broad mandate: “Make a game with a queer-resonant theme.” In game development terms, I was product owner; another lab researcher was our game director. While we did spend time in the room with the team to observe them and provide input and oversight, the game’s creative direction — story, art, sound, gameplay — was in the hands of the students, and it was really their efforts that drove the project. The result was a game called A Closed World , a short and simple Flash-based RPG. When the game was released, it got good press both internally and externally, with coverage by multiple game publications, including Kotaku , as well as non-games news outlets. In retrospect, I am sure the MIT name opened doors for us that might not open as easily for other queer creators, particularly indie queer creators working on their own. My team was thrilled to see our little game find positive reception in the world, however. This is not to say we didn’t receive criticisms for missteps or things we overlooked, and of those, many were still the products of intense discussion and debate among the team, or between the team and myself or my colleague who was serving as game director. The game’s story involves escaping from a seemingly haunted forest; at one point, I suggested the ending involve the main character finding a cliffside over clouds and taking a leap of faith to leave their home and start a new life. Members of my team argued, convincingly, that such an ending might read like an attempt at self-harm instead. Discussions of that kind were numerous, and that was about a thing that didn’t make the final cut, let alone what did. However, some high-profile queer indie devs took serious issue with it, for various reasons. In one of the more striking examples, Anna Anthropy made a parody game called “A Closed Mind,” using a similar visual style but written to suggest our game believed intolerance could be defeated like a JRPG boss. Many of the criticisms we received at the time suggested that it was a waste for MIT to spend money having my team make this game; that we didn’t understand how to make queer games, or understand the issues. At the time I needed to be diplomatic in my public responses, since I was representing the lab and the university, but in hindsight, things like “A Closed Mind” and accusations that my team didn’t really understand the issues at all feel not only misplaced but extremely petty. For the members of my team who identified as somewhere in the vastness of the queer spectrum, accusations from queer devs that the team wasn’t queer enough, or didn’t understand queer experiences, were deeply hurtful (and to be honest, they hurt me too). It’s one thing to dislike what we did; that’s natural, and putting art in the world means needing to be prepared for people to dislike it. This felt like something else entirely. That experience is what made me scared for Taash’s and Veilguard ’s reception. Was it going to get the “not queer enough!” label because it had, admittedly, tackled things at a more basic and beginner level than some might like? Would people use things like the “Taash Notes” codex entry to claim that the writer(s) didn’t understand the issues? Criticism of queerness — or, indeed, a focus on any marginalized identity category — in an artistic work is fraught from the jump. You want to support creators who make attempts to be inclusive, who actively work to bring in these types of characters and themes, but at the same time, it feels so easy for even the most well-intentioned attempt at inclusivity to head somewhat off the rails anyway — something that’s happened to BioWare before . Thus, it’s necessary that such criticism be able to call “queer work” into account for its mistakes too. It’s such a careful line to walk. The problem is that I think we as both critics and fans have, over the past decade plus, created an environment where creators experience enormous fears about getting it wrong, and producing something that isn’t pitch-perfect on the issues in every way is immediately painted as so harmful or detrimental the work needs to be thrown out entirely. The anxiety is real, but the concrete steps devs can take to address concerns can also lead to positive outcomes. The rise in sensitivity readers, diversity consultants, and other such steps devs can take to head off mistakes before games reach the shelves are an unalloyed good, and they have roots in a similar place. Are our only two options “getting it right” and “getting it harmfully wrong,” though? Things aren’t, if you’ll excuse the sorta-pun, binary in that way. I don’t necessarily think the presentation of Taash’s gender journey is as artful as it could be, for sure; I think it could have been smoother, more integrated into the setting and into their broader story about choosing who they wish to be (Taash’s big, oft-repeated line is “You don’t get to tell me who I am”). Is it harmful , though? Or just not to some players’ tastes? With each new take and article and blog post I’ve read, I find it harder to justify excoriating the writing team for Veilguard on this one, of accusing them of “getting queerness wrong.” That’s wild, and I am not gonna put myself in the place of people who told my team, back in 2011, that their earnest attempt wasn’t queer enough. I said this was a story about fear and anxiety, and that’s what it is now, although the pitch I made to Polygon about this story had a very different form at first. The original idea was less about Taash and more about how I felt the approach to “playersexual” companion story and romance designs in Veilguard was a step forward from Dragon Age 2 (spoilers: it is); Taash was more of a footnote in that story. As I wrote it, though, I was getting more and more blocked, and I realized it was because I was cutting and rearranging and rewording and watering down what I was saying in the interest of not upsetting anyone. I didn’t want to criticize too hard and have Trick Weekes (Taash’s primary writer) and the Veilguard team feel I was attacking them unduly, but I was also afraid of drawing backlash from queer readers who felt I was too forgiving or didn’t go hard enough. I think this is why I have such mounting frustration with accusations I’ve seen from critics and players saying that Taash is just a cardboard stand-in for the writers’ thoughts on gender, or that the writing surrounding it was too “safe” or sanded down or not messy enough. Of course it’s not messy! Queer players and critics have been in comment sections, blogs, and social media posts for years tut-tutting everyone — even other queer devs and indie devs with nowhere near the resources at their disposal! — for not getting things pitch-perfect, for not using the exact right terms, for being messy at all . It’s totally believable this situation is the result. Which do you want? Messiness, or infallible politics? You cannot have both! They are antithetical! Perhaps being too safe, too “polished,” is indeed the problem when it comes to Taash, or Veilguard ’s handling of gender broadly, but I’d much rather have an earnest and too-safe attempt based on an ethos of trying to do right by us queer players than something actively harmful to the community at large. Too safe is not actively harmful; too safe is “room for improvement.” Too safe is a learning opportunity. Culture Opinion Dragon Age: The VeilguardOPP seeking witnesses of wrong way driver on Hwy. 401None