But, technically: I died. @5mcsinatrenchcoat - Tumblr Blog

Dragon Age / Mass Effect / Cyberpunk 2077 / Baldur's Gate 3

Main blog: tarraxahum

I loved the Veilguard, before that I loved Inquisition, and I also rather enjoyed Andromeda, none of you can hurt me in a way that matters <3

VEILGUARD SPOILER TAG: # datv spoilers

I'm a one-main-repetitive-playthrough kinda creature, so list of main MCs under the cut!

#da posting #commander posting #cyber posting #yes these shall be my designated tags #tav posting

You're so correct. If the DA writers had teeth Harding would absolutely kill a companion and then still try to morally defend it.

I have just remembered that she does threaten Lucanis that she keeps a special arrow with his name on it. At the start, when no one trusts him.

Can you imagine if it was a possibility to fail a conversation or some other check so badly she'd conclude she has to use that arrow. 'Cause she WOULD.

(the drama around it would be even worse than with Ashley tho. 'cause Lucanis is not only a beloved blorbo but also romanceable)

#maker forbid women do anything

greelin

[DAZED FROM BLOOD LOSS] hey not to kill the vibe completely but i think i am in love with you

#basically all my mcs but ESPECIALLY Danka

stonesense

Can you talk more about Harding just happening to be lucky that she joined a morally good group? Like the more I listen to Inquisition and Veilguard dialogue with her in them, I can’t help but think you’re onto something.

“Me? I’m no one. Lived near Redcliffe all my life. Herded sheep for my neighbor. When the Inquisition came through my village, I helped by telling them everything I knew about the area. Then I signed on. Wanted to see the world before it was swallowed up by… that thing out there.”

anyone can offer you a chance to see the world. adventure, beautiful foreign sights, respect for your skill, status when you go home, community and camaraderie among your fellow fighters. chances that you might never usually get as an ‘ordinary’ person, in this case living in a rural area as a (fantasy) minority. honestly for me the whole “get out there and see the world!” thing specifically evokes the real world evil of like, classic military recruitment rhetoric. it’s all a big adventure! never mind what you’ll be doing and who you’ll be doing it to.

and our first sight of harding is a confident smirk when she kills. (which we’re supposed to feel fine about and maybe think that she’s a #girlboss, because remember the mages and templars are Crazy, so killing them indiscriminately is fine. but let’s imagine dai is a serious game.) she obviously took very easily to violence in the inquisition’s name before she’d met any of the inquisition’s leaders, before the inquisition had a real direction, and before they had a simple-to-justify, no-longer-human enemy like corypheus. if she could be convinced to do all that by the inquisition’s scouts, then why not anyone else offering the same things? why not an inquisition that was actually, you know, an inquisition?

despite leading with wanting to see the world and not even mentioning any kind of moral motivation, harding definitely perceives herself as a good person and i don’t think she would go for anything that didn’t have a veneer of righteousness. she takes pride in the inquisition and what she believes to be its purpose. but any organisation can say they’re doing it for the good and order and stability of the world, right. any organisation can pass you that message through a recruiter who at least sounds like they believe it. and as a scout on the ground you’re so far from the war table that you will never really know why the people directing you are making their decisions. and you opt to kill whoever they tell you to kill anyway. even in some impossibly hypothetical world where those decisions are all just and measured and necessary, can it ever possibly be moral to just hand over your conscience like that? to kill blindly because those are your orders?

i feel like harding’s narrative veers so closely to real world recruitment rhetoric that i don’t just find it uninteresting to be like Yay It All Worked Out :), i find it Bad. this is not heroic when it happens in real life and i don’t think it should be heroic here. i know i’m in the genre where Pure And Honourable Warfare Of Our Innocent Boys And Girls Against Inhuman Monsters or Perhaps The Inherently Evil Foreign Horde of Baddies is virulently everywhere but i think that’s precisely why we should be aware and critical of it and thinking around it not just accepting it as fact you know

and harding would be a better character for this setting if we engaged with the blood on her hands. she is essentially a killer, it’s the first defining thing we see her do! she doesn’t have to be stuffed into a “cute wholesome moral compass we don’t have to take seriously” box just because the writers can’t even imagine a dwarf being taken seriously let alone a dwarf woman

#I mean.#killing Cullen in one of his endings and calling it a mercy #and like everything she says in the Veilguard about farmers being used to killing 'cause. wolves.#AND her enthusiastic readiness to potentially work for Lucanis (aka the Crows) in the future 'cause it pays tons #really continues to work in favor of this characterization #but the fandom takes her less seriously than the game does #'cause aww she's a people pleaser who blushes a lot uwu #yea and she'll murder to stay in people's good graces if she considers them the right people.#not to even mention that at the start of DAtV she's explicitly weighted against Neve in being ruthless and prone to action and violence #and BEFORE that SHE's the one who offers to shoot Solas first #like she wasn't just happily recruited into a military organization and started killing on the promise of seeing the world #(allegedly at the age of like 19)#she's NOW a veteran who's ready to grab their prized gun at the slightest 'just' opportunity #and it all clashes deliciously with her being positioned as the emphatic one at the same time.#'you believe that the world is beautiful. that people are good'.#and you got your arms elbow-deep in blood to keep it that way. from your POV and those your senior.#like all that IS in the game #but nooo let's focus on how she presented herself more competent as your employee in DAI.#or on how many freckles she has #etc etc #so funny how in the comics Varric was like 'Harding's too soft to kill Solas if it comes to that'#but no. it's him. the romantic storyteller who believed in the power of word until the bitter end.#Harding's a killer.#EDIT: if either game even HAD conflicts like that Harding should've done something as controversial as Ashley shooting Wrex in ME1.#it would be precisely in character.

thebaldursmouthgazette

I know the popular theory is that Sera is Andruil/possessed by Andruil but I just can’t see how Andruil would get there

But there’s definitely something up and I think the answer is that she’s a spirit who became real, like Cole, but so long ago she’s forgotten

Her memories about where she comes from are vague, she can wield a bow without training, and Solas refers to her as though they are part of the same people (which he pointedly does not do with any other elf), that people being spirits who took physical form

Also her name is a word in the elven language, like Solas’ name which is the word for pride. We don’t know what it means, just that it is in a phrase one would use to excuse oneself (Ara seranna ma). I bet it translates to a type of spirit or demon name

thebaldursmouthgazette

Girl what is up with you??

#as much as I am on the 'Sera doesn't need to be some deus machina to be valuable and interesting as she is' side #(which was mainly the opposition to people clearly only liking the Andruil theory 'cause it made her more like Solas)#(therefore fixed her)#if there has to be a theory then I like this much better

hattedhedgehog

Inspired by this post (x). I keep thinking about how gender is viewed differently in Qunari society and is determined by job. But what if the job itself WAS their gender?

Bull being from gender nonconforming Qunari society would lead to witty situations like this:

Orlesian: Are you a man or a woman Iron Bull: I’m a spy O: No I meant biologically IB: A Qunari O: No I mean what’s between your legs IB: On a good day, someone’s mouth ],) ],) ],)

I am now curious whether I can just shove missing mods in the folder

Anyone has the Veilguard+FMM installed and willing to help out?

#i just need you to build a couple mods and then throw the ModData folder at me #even tho I have zero idea whether that'd work #dragon age the veilguard #context for those who don't know: Linux #the experimental Frosty build doesn't support bundles yet and I am suffering

galedekarios

A LOST POEM Translated from Qunlat

Slow blink, seems to say... I'm going to eat you, little fish! Purr, soft soothing friend.

lizzienoodles

guy who's having gauzy idealized wife flashbacks for the whole adventure but it turns out she isn't dead or anything he just really misses her and wants to get home

#kinara whenever sera isn't in the party #she's so dramatic about it even Cassandra low key wishes she could kick her.#and Cassandra LOVES romance.

I may be too sleepy and misremembering something important, but if the Wardens' ritual is just ingesting the darkspawn blood

Could there be accidental "wardens" outside the order who just happened to get some of that in their mouth when fighting and survived

after all this time of hitting my head against the wall of DAtV modding on Linux and after getting help on Discord I managed to get SOME of the mods working

sadly I don't think any of the Inquisitor ones survived but AT LEAST Danka's chest hair is back. I can live with that.

the-second-moon

on the use of the word "okay" in thedas

So, "okay" is a word that doesn't appear much in DA dialogue through the first three installments, though it's become quite common by Veilguard.

Likely not an intentional evolution, but a symptom of the fact that the language used in DAV is generally more contemporary than the other installments. Still. Let's play in the space. Because it's not that no one uses "okay" before then. It's actually a relatively common Varric word -- he says it in both DA2 and DAI.

Obvious conclusion: "Okay" is dwarven slang.

(Corollary headcanon: Increased contact with the surface has spread dwarven slang more widely. Perhaps even helped by the popularity of Varric's books...)

Over my breakfast this morning I stared into space wondering what the origins of "OK" could be in the dwarven context. Orzammar is the obvious O. So... Orzammar Kingdom? Orzammar King?

Of course. "OK" is the seal that Orzammar's king uses to express that a document has his approval.

Don't worry everyone. It all makes sense now.

#SEE now this is an approach I can get behind!!#my lumguistic mind loves this thanks #...*linguistic. wow.