Love Begins
Sweet Seals For You, Always
styofa doing anything
PR's Tumblrdome
Claire Keane
Discoholic đȘ©
Xuebing Du
Show & Tell
romaâ
NASA
ojovivo
Janaina Medeiros
Cosimo Galluzzi
we're not kids anymore.
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noise dept.
trying on a metaphor
Kaledo Art
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@andnatiabrosca
**I am in the âdump a bunch of rough posts out the doorâ phase right now - please understand.
About
[[currently primarily placeholder]]
I'm Birch (they/he).
Main: @nebulouswinds
Ao3: nebulouswinds
avi: modernAU!Nat Brosca from [this picrew]
current wip list
Character Masterpost, including:
Nat Brosca
Miriam Hawke
Maran Trevelyan
Malachite Cadash
Lore Topics, including:
dwarven language
My absolute favorite way to view the Inquisitor is as someone who is still a prisoner the whole game. Because there is never a clear moment that ends. You're given titles, but you still can't leave. You're given power to judge, but only the cases the advisors hand off. You are occasionally allowed to make a decision when the advisors can't agree among themselves. Three years after you finish what was supposedly your only job, they still haven't let you leave.
inquisitor be like:
I podded the ficlet I wrote like a month back - Brother Treasure-Hunter as prompted by @/herearedragons. Do I know how to properly podfic? No. Am I a little more interested in sound design than I have skill or patience for? Yeah.
Did I still finish this? Yeah!
It's just about 6 minutes long. I'll crosspost to Ao3 when I feel up to doing all that bull.
STEN âą THE CHARIOT
two forces pulling in opposite direction âą I had the pleasure of painting Sten with the tarot card The Chariot as inspiration for 2026's @dragonageannual ARCANA!
Average total AO3 stats
Inspired by various posts showcasing people's stats, I wanted to get a base average for user stats. If you wish to contribute, please fill in the following form!
This form intends to gather data in order to establish the baseline of what are the overall stats for the average AO3 writer. If you wish to
The data obtained will be fully anonymous and only used as a part of a whole dataset. If you know someone who would be interested in filling it in, feel free to share it around! Thank you <3
I think the people who see and choose to participate in this survey are likely to skew towards having higher stats. (I'm guessing people with a bunch of stories on AO3 and higher author stats are more likely to be highly engaged with fandom on other platforms like Tumblr, and therefore more likely to find the survey. They may also be more eager to participate in such a survey.) So I hope the average of the responses is not taken to be an accurate representation of the overall average for AO3. But I'm interested to see what comes of this, especially given that it'll be part of a larger data set! đđ
me: does this fantasy setting have no misogyny or does it just have women in the warrior class
they: i dont understand
me: *explains in detail the difference between a fantasy setting w no misogyny n a fantasy setting where the creator just added women to the warrior class n put no further thought into it whatsoever*
they: *laugh* its a good fantasy setting, sir
me: *looks inside* *they just added women to the warrior class*
Dragon age origins is likeâŠ. Youâre nineteen, new in town, and itâs your second day at pizza hut. You donât even know how to work the register yet and you just watched your manager get carted off by the paramedics. You have no contact info for him, his next of kin, or corporate. The only other employee is the guy whoâs been here for two weeks and is a bit of a doofus, and neither of you really know what youâre supposed to do now. You both desperately need this job though, and the doofus at least has a drivers license and *kiiinda* knows how to use the oven so you just. Shrug, and start taking orders and making pizzas and praying to god that the bills are on autopay.
And weirdly enough youâre really good at this: making pizzas and dealing with shitty customers and breaking up fights in the parking lot and pretending to be Duncanâs cousin on the phone so the utility company doesnât cut off the power. But running a store is a lot of work for two dumb kids, so slowly you start accumulating a bunch of competent weirdos to help out, like the nun who left her convent because god told her to help you make pizzas, and the elderly school teacher who just survived a mass shooting, and the guy the papa johns down the street hired to run you over. And really thereâs no way any of this should be working as well as it is - youâre absolutely committing fraud of some kind here - but youâve managed to dodge the landlord every time heâs stopped by, and the health inspector never shows up to tell you to stop letting your dog hang out behind the counter and youâre all still kinda looking at each other and asking âare we allowed to just do this?â before shrugging again and continuing to make pizzas, until somehow, through a series of unlikely technicalities, your doofus coworker ends up on the ballot for governor.
And after like five months of this the regional manager wanders in out of nowhere and youâre sure heâs about to chew your ass out for this mess, but it turns out heâs pretty chill and honestly kind of impressed with how you managed to keep the place up and running all on your own. So now youâre all thinking âthank god, thereâs someone here who actually knows how to run a Pizza Hutâ only for him to get hit by a car two days later on the night of the Super Bowl.
Sten is 100% unchanged in this scenario
"You could have waited inside, my dear Warden." "And where's the fun in that, huh? I thought I'd meet you halfway, save some time." "Oh, a perfect moment to waste that time now, then."
Help. I'm so deep.
i think itâs uncharitable to act like the dark ritual being sex is just for the ~ edginess ~ of having an evil sex ritual. it completely serves a narrative purpose and fits the genre and world
i mean itâs supposed to make you uncomfortable. itâs supposed to be a horrible weird thing to have to do or ask someone to do. and nobody in real life cares about blood magic because it isnât real. players already overwhelmingly choose to do the dark ritual anyway, can you even imagine if it didnât have any edge at all and it was just well morrigan does some blood magic offscreen ooooo spooky. come on
people will see a character like alistair, who has issues about sex because his identity and plot completely hinge on him having been conceived in sex perceived as immoral, and who can potentially later break up with the player depending on whether heâs become someone willing to defy those morals or not, and who can be put in an arranged/political marriage by the player, and whose status as a virgin is apparently so key to his character that the writers let you ask him about whether or not heâs had sex even if youâre playing a man and heâs thus unromanceable, and be like wow the decision on this characterâs final fate being about sex is so crazy. it came out of nowhere. probably just written in because the writers want grimdark street cred or they get off on it or something
obviously the dark ritual is even more so about morrigan than it is about alistair, itâs her moment. and i think we can recognise tropes the dark ritual is playing into without, like, ignoring, that sex becoming a means to an end is not a strange, ill-fitting add-on to a character who is about motherhood and bodily autonomy and power and survival-of-the-fittest mentalities and what is illicit and why. does that make sense at all. like i donât want to give more credit than is due and iâm not saying dao is the grand height of feminism. but when youâre setting your story in a world where bloodlines and bastards matter socially, and women have political value based on whether or not they can produce children, and religion dictates morality and who can have sex with who... then sex, and especially sex intended to produce a child to serve a purpose, regardless of the potential parentsâ feelings toward each other or lack thereof, is not just spicy set dressing, itâs fundamental to what youâre writing about. you know?
no dragon age romance will ever compare to zevran arainai. he's bisexual. he was raised in a murder assassin torture cult after being raised in a brothel. he has a bunch of tattoos and even knows how to give them. he tries to murder you when you first meet him and then poses sexily afterwards. he says he's skilled at lockpicking and then never manages to pick a single lock in the entire game. he murdered his last lover after falsely believing that she betrayed the crows. he regularly slept with his marks before killing them to give them one last good night alive. when you ask him to have sex with you he says one liners like "arghhh pirate zevran reporting for duty!" he gets upset and broody when he realizes that he's in love with you after you ask him for more in your relationship. he proposes to you with an earring from a dead guy before he even tells you that he loves you. he's the only companion to almost completely stay with you after origins (besides the dlcs and parts of da2, he presumably stays with you the rest of your lives). if you die, he never gets into a relationship or has sex with anyone ever again. he constantly talks about you when he's away from you (da2). he calls the sword of the dead king of ferelden "sexy" and says that he "must have it". he's a devout andrastian. he loves being an assassin and doesn't feel bad about murdering people. you can have a threesome with him and a woman he used to sleep with and helped save from her abusive husband. he's slept with countless people and you're the first person that he's ever actually loved. he spends the rest of his life when he's not with you devoted to terrorizing the organization that abused him as a child (and adult) and killing of its leaders. when you tell him that you love him, he says that "he knows." he's blonde. and he's perfect in every way possible.
Morrigan: I think that my mother made it fun so that a child did not learn to fear. And I think that it was necessary.
isn't it crazy how flemeth made sure morrigan wasn't afraid of anything but her.
making sure morrigan did not fear the templars while not downplaying the threat they faced is probably one of flemeth's better parenting decisions overall, but the way it contrasts with how utterly fucking terrified morrigan is of flemeth makes it so clear it was partially another method of control. which makes me feel truly just wretched.
'Rook and the others stay in the Lighthouse' 'Rook and the others go their seperate ways' 'Rook and the others have get togethers every few months' Rook and the others are going to be real fuckin busy handling another exhalted march on the elves and maybe even the dwarves if they're not careful with what they tell people lmao
when the persona you made eats you; when the performance youve been putting on eats you; when the name they gave you eats you; when the image people made of you eats you; when the role you were assigned eats you; when the you that other people see or even made for you or you made for them takes over the you that you know and eats you alive.
anyway my new josephine fix is that if she was sent to orlais young for marriage then it would be more fitting to the tone and stakes of the world than âfinishing schoolâ. and it would be more logical for bards to approach an isolated and dissatisfied young bride than a well-connected student carrying all her familyâs hopes. her refusal to turn to violence would now have meaning as a personal sacrifice, because this version of josie would have actually had a desperate need for control over the direction of her own life, and becoming a bard would have seemed to offer that. her development of her diplomatic skills and the respect she receives from her orlesian peers would feel genuinely hard-won if she started from the underdog position of a friendless foreign wife. she should have a reputation in orlais, but i donât think she must be or even should be an experienced international ambassador, because sheâs so young for that, and itâs logical and fun for the inner circle to be the unlikely few who are willing to take the massive risk of joining the early inquisition precisely because they would never get such an opportunity otherwise. all that has to have happened is for leliana to have taken note of her abilities. and finally her âinnocence in loveâ as leliana puts it would make a lot more sense if in inquisition sheâs a recent widow (or still married, look i still think her romance shouldâve let you be a real homewrecker, sue me) who simply hasnât had a chance to be courted and previously could shelter in her unavailability and easily dismiss all comers as not having serious intentions
So I was thinking. Regret Prison is such a mess.
Regret Prison sequence is another reason there needed to be a proper prequel story per origin (do not explain to me that it's expensive etc. my job is to complain) OR a game between DAI and VG because the whole bit with Varric only lands under specific conditions that the game handles as undisputed canon but like. It's an RPG? Then this is absolutely something that should be customized by the player. I mean, DA2 had an option to just not get along with Varric/not gaf about Varric past the point of being two people forced to do something together. You can just not interact with Varric for the majority of the game.
The Varric twist is aimed at the player, not the player character. It's supposed to work because the player knows, no matter how obscure it might be, that Varric is Someone Important in the narrative. Which makes it a nice emotional cinematic moment but absolute dogshit RPG element. What about Rooks who are, despite being capable people with supposedly Good aligned personality, just not buddies with Varric? You don't have to be the closest friends with someone to be competent at your job of replacing them. What about Rooks who do not have a feeling of personal regret over Varric's death because why would they? They were doing a job and sometimes a job means losing your higher-ups; and it isn't your fault.
Same can be applied to companions because, alright, what if I spent zero time with this companion. Or if my character is a very pragmatic individual who does not create such personal attachments with their colleagues (nodding at an average Crow here).
It's just. Very obvious to me that the Regret Sequence is not there for roleplay value. It's written with a Very Specific Rook in mind that goes beyond just being a Good Person. You can be a "good person" (a very subjective term is all) but steel your heart and not consider teammates' losses your personal fault. Man idk you need to hit so many specific variables for the prison to make sense or work narratively. Which IMO could be solved by giving us actual time to build a bond with Varric without relying on the omniscient player who likes the character. Like imagine if All That Remains in DA2 was about some fan favorite character dying and not Hawke's mother. Yeah.
I think the thing that drives me the craziest is that there is literally not a single thing that Rook does in that game that I think any reasonable person would regret on a personal level.
Pretty much all the risks Rook takes pan out. No one's death is actually directly Rook's fault. Even the mission that is panned as a "failure" is not Rook's fault because Ghilan'nain would have attacked Weisshupt whether Rook did anything about it or not. If you pay literally any attention to the opening it's very clear that the ritual started fucking up when Solas used the ritual focus to stab Varric (Titan knife into the Dwarf flesh????) so you can't even blame Rook for loosing the Blight. The Treviso vs Minrathous situation seems bizarrely pointed when no one had any reason to believe that Rook's presence would have meant shit all AND Rook actually sent MORE people to the city that they DIDN'T go to.
You spend the whole sequence slogging through what clearly was meant to be some kind of "boo hoo I killed" you back pat pep talk about how Rook can't undermine the spirit of their sacrifice by taking responsibility for it but Rook can also walk through that scene already knowing that like a sane person inventing the most bizarrely useless scene of all time.
The Regret prison didn't make me sad. It made me angry. Because I spent a whole game seeing Varric, who I would have preferred not to see at all tbh, acting in such a way where he could have been replaced with a haystack and accomplished the same amount, only to get some Sixth Sense Ass "HE WAS DEAD ALL ALONG" reveal right at the end. He should have been in Kirkwall. He was the Viscount...Why couldn't he just be in Kirkwall?
And that's not even getting STARTED on the question of WHY in the HELL would Solas invent a prison locked by regrets for two people who have obviously never felt remorse ever in their life?????? Who is he trapping in there because it sure as fuck wasn't Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain.
I'm sorry. I hate the Regret Prison more as time goes on. I hate it so much. I actually wanted Varric to either be absent or dead in VG. Somehow they managed to do both and neither at the same time.
