CerysAmell

This blog is pretty much Bioware fangirling at this point. I hope you like Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

[maanmelk]

He can have some soft as a treat.

@dymme to thank as usual <3

[yolebrat]

DA Kiss Week - Day 7- Sneaky

[dragonpyre]

Ngl I totally forgot fandom discourse was a thing. I don’t care man, I have car payments

[rootbeerrex]

starting a collection

[clever-fandom-reference]

If I may submit:

[kisskisscantfallinlove]

[mrs-gauche]

The Rotunda and the Fresco

On the mural, all messere would say is, “Skyhold is her fortress. These are her actions.”

[ashillayn]

I think the Greek myth that Solavellan slots the easiest into, at least for me, is Eros and Psyche. Especially on Lavellan's side.

"Oh, I didn't mean to get entangled with a god, but he fell first and I didn't even know he was a god then. So here I am, ready to walk to hell to be reunited my man. But damn, he could have handled this a lot better."

[ashillayn]

In this scenario, Mythal is Aphrodite

[mogwaei]

he likes when she wears his clothes

[goobigoombi]

Solas 4 U *kisses your feed*

[veilishvixen]

“All the demons I fought…all the rifts I closed.

I don’t want to die. Not knowing that the world still needed me.”

“The failure was mine. I should pay the price.

But the people…they need me.”

[obsidian-bone]

[brimm-art]

cut a path.

[quiddie]

🥵

[sunlight-shunlight]

as always i was thinking about it (thedas art history) and

i think actually the whole chantry situation would be significantly influenced by the fact that they have control over all the tranquil? and the tranquil are... literate, unpaid, tireless, detail-oriented labourers, who will never get bored or cranky or want to quit. so they would actually be like the backbone of how southern thedas makes any kind of printed material, in scriptoriums attached to the circles or whatever?

which is also really convenient for the chantry. since then they have a chokehold on what gets disseminated. any independent groups that make manuscripts or print material would be less efficient, since by necessity, they would need to... pay their scribes and give them days off, and occasionally have them goof up a page and waste time.

and this raises really interesting questions about stuff like the book of shartan and the heretical chant verses being spread around - can people quietly bribe a chantry official to get them to assign a tranquil to copy it out under the table? is there part-time scribe work going on in alienages to keep these texts circulating? do mages (also literate and have access to materials) themselves manage to do this type of thing covertly, or do they have enough loyalty from the tranquil that the tranquil would be willing to lie about it and help them make some contraband?

anyway, THIS is how the popularity of varric's serialized novels, spurring the development of the printing press, and therefore more secular decentralized sources of media, could create a Chantry Reformation Chaos Era, when the chantry loses its grip on information and archives-

[sunlight-shunlight]

ok so, bianca davri invented some automatic farming devices, as well as a spinning wheel! good for her. so. i'm nominating that she could have invented a printing press too!

which would even make sense to explain why varric's novels are such notoriously beloved hits, bc while also being entertaining, they were some of the first to be published, and presumably set the precedent for what serialized, mass-printed, non-chantry approved literature even looks like in southern thedas...

and i think varric being the pioneer of this makes sense!! bc everyone keeps going ''UGH his books are so TRASHY!!'' but the excerpts shown are... fine? and his first book even seemed like it was genuinely earnest, and he was working out some Feelings about being a dwarven criminal and having a shitty brother. so the bad reputation would make sense if it was a chantry policy to smear his writing a bit, bc they don't like that it's popular and not very Maker Honouring™.

[sunlight-shunlight]

oh gosh, that's also true!! they must have some crazy stuff going on with the publishing companies being like chantry/merchant's guild fronts all beefing with each other, either legally or violently...

[sunlight-shunlight]

i had one final thought on this, which is: i saw some commentary once like "why does cassandra find it like a shameful guilty pleasure to read romance novels? her entire religion is based off a star-crossed love triangle situation? why would they have any social stigma about this?"

and the answer is... the problem was not the genre or smuttiness! the problem is that varric "centrism dwarf" tethras has been making widespread, popular, secular literature that has no dependence on the chantry for distribution.

so they HAVE to spin it as "oh, these are trashy... poorly written... sinful, even 😔" to try and save face. but it didn't really help, bc fundamentally people love reading that shit, and if it's cheap, quick to distribute, and serialized, that's even better than what the chantry publishing system was doing before.

also in cassandra's case, as the right hand of the divine, this would make her look untrustworthy to the chantry/like she's sympathizing with varric's Radical Ideas (lmaooo!) if she's seen reading his books! but unfortunately she likes them too much to stop 😭😭😭

[sunlight-shunlight]

verric tethras outsold the chantry's most popular book using the newfangled secular printing press rather than the chantry scriptoriums, and this started making a lot of people nervous, in this essay i will-

[warpedlegacy]

Yo I love this. Also just to add - remember that the Chantry may have a choke hold on lyrium distribution on the surface. But that's only because of their trade agreement with the Dwarven Merchant's Guild. So imagining that negotiation meeting again, where the Chantry demanded the cessation of printing press technology (or possibly rights to its access). And the dwarves refusing. And there's nothing the Chantry can do about it, because if they push too hard, the dwarves can just start selling their lyrium elsewhere. Thus breaking that oh so tenuous monopoly of supply.

[tethrasing-deactivated20170803]

have some fun vivienne facts!

if the inquisitor romances dorian, vivienne receives a letter from an acquaintance in tevinter expressing shock at the “disturbing rumors” of their relationship, and vivienne responds by ripping the acquaintance a new one

repeatedly expresses sorrow at civilian deaths (”the defenseless are always the first casualties of war”)

cole said this about her harrowing “no, I will not fall, no one will control me ever again…shaking, hollow, harrowed but smiling at templars to show them i’m me, i am not like that”

despite her insistence that cole is a demon, she was worried for him

unlike solas, she is afraid of demons

finds it delightful that varric is writing a story with her as the villain

“my dear, if i didn’t want people to fear me I wouldn’t dress like this”

wants to send a sternly worded letter to varric’s tailor

was born in wycome 

has read hard in hightown

“i am the most dangerous thing in the room, darling”

treats bull like a favorite son and teaches him to dance

bull compares her to a qunari dreadnought, which she enjoys

greatly admired divine justinia

sees templars as a useful tool

“that which makes you different can be a burden or a source of strength”

was taken to the circle at such a young age that she doesn’t remember her parents

passes information on to sera and the friends of red jenny

worries for dorian’s safety in trying to reform the imperium, tells him to be careful

[stars-collected]

I’m sure someone’s added how distressed she is about the tranquil when you find out it’s their skulls being used for the occularum, but she gets so upset about it :( Vivienne :(

[in-the-drowning-deep]

pisses Sera off on purpose during Trespasser to stop her from panicking and calm her down

frets about a high approval Inquisitor and tells them to “make sure you’re still standing when the dust settles”

[cerysamell]

My favorite instance of Vivienne showing more nuance than people give her credit for is in the quest In Your Heart Shall Burn.

There are only two companions who you gain approval with if you go out of your way to rescue people during the attack on Haven. Varric is one, as one might expect, but Vivienne is the other.

Rescuing these people gains Vivienne nothing, but she stands to lose a great deal if the Inquisition fails. She still approves of an Inquisitor who risks their life to save them.

[evermorelore]

eyes of pride ⋆˚࿔ finally using all those renders I’ve been making as the reference for my sketchbook😊🥰

[obsidian-bone]

I've been on a bit of a hiatus, but I'm still alive! Here's Solavellan kisses as an apology

[sunlight-shunlight]

am i the only one who considered the veil a very blunt pollution/climate change metaphor since dao 😭

they literally say it gets damaged permanently by any death or warfare or violence. in a dark fantasy setting where people are fighting nonstop. and then that damage causes the area to become uninhabitable, and alters the nature of the spirits to become evil and attack people. and this has been going on for millennia, and people are just kind of used to it, and very few people are considering that it's largely irreversible and the damage will grow over time!! and the dalish elves/mages/poor people are forced to live in places where the veil is worse, and just accept the increased danger bc they have no other options.

so this seemed very very obviously like. either it tragically finally crumbles and kills the thedas in [whatever amount of time creates enough wars to fully destroy it], or it's optimistically altered significantly to prevent thedas from dying?

am i insane? even aside from the spirits/elves part, the entire vibe was like "what if microplastics created angry ghosts trying to kill you, and yet people refuse to stop using plastic" 😭

[cerysamell]

YOU’RE NOT ALONE. Finally, another person who thinks the way I did 😭

To be honest, this is why, until Veilguard was released, that I was fully in favor of the Veil staying up. I felt like the Veil was this poignant metaphor for climate change, and that even though some consequences are permanent, we can still work to mitigate the damage and make the world a better place. That we can always reverse course, even if some things can never be fixed.

I don’t really feel this way anymore, after seeing how Veilguard turned out, but this was fully my interpretation for the past ten years before the game came out.

[refrainee]

Beloved

[tawnyfool]

𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘥𝘰𝘸 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘴𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘺𝘦𝘵

--

the aragorn/arwen ear touch but solavellan, featuring my very first lavellan, Leto.