endless winter @icy-warden - Tumblr Blog

Vergil Surana | Elf | Mage (Blood Magic & Arcane Warrior) | Warden (Commander) | Zevran 💙

Ice prince that likes to know about things and stay in control. Never planned for becoming a Warden, but he won't willingly give back the power that comes with the position.

Art | Writing: tumblr - ao3 | Aesthetics | OC info posts

#Vergil Surana #Vergil's bio #WardenTxt

vielens

#Duncan

dragonagegallery

Chantry Priests - Dragon Age: Origins

summer mood

like, david gaider's stated justification for thedas' promiscuous mage stereotype is kind of laughably simplistic but also fascinatingly revealing, right. mages are outcasts, isolated outside of 'normal society,' and so not subject to the same cultural expectations regarding sexuality. which gets framed in his word of god comments and the few textual nods (like that one bit in the calling) as almost a freedom from the framework of (heterosexual) marriage for the purpose of childbearing as the ideal/only form of sexuality. they don't have to worry about passing down a family name (because they wouldn't get to raise a kid anyway and wouldn't have anything to give to them.)

but if we're honest about the power dynamics here, what it really is is that mages are excluded from having sexual relationships that are accepted and respected by society. you are watched at all hours and have to sneak off if you want to have sex in private. you cannot get married (not without permission that you'll never be granted). you should not have children, because they would be tainted from birth by the possibility of inheriting your magic. if you do have children, they will be taken from you.

all expressions of mage sexuality are sexually deviant, therefore all mages are conceived of as inherently sexually deviant, and furthermore mages as an outgroup can serve as a kind of dumping ground for members of the ingroup to blamelessly act out their own 'deviant' desires without it reflecting back on them. is it gay if you fuck a mage? he's not really a man like you are, is he? is it cheating if you fuck a mage? you could've been ensorcelled into it. they don't have morals and standards of behavior like us - we don't allow them to, of course, but they don't even try. so if you think about it it's not really possible to do anything wrong to them, is it?

ryann-44

Witherfang

aesfocus

Mother of the Halla

DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS (2009) — developed by bioware.

#Morrigan

thewardenisonthecase

Questions for the Warden/HoF

These range from things related to the game's events and who the Warden is as a person.

What is the Warden's name? Does it have a meaning behind it? How do they feel about their name?

How would you describe the Warden's personality before and after the prologue? Did it change much or did they remain the same?

Prior to the prologue, who was the Warden's closest friend?

Did the Warden have any romantic relationships before the game?

What are their thoughts on Duncan? How did they feel about his actions during the Joining?

Were they impacted by Cailan's death? Or did they not care about him?

How did they feel about being put in a leading position? Do they resent Alistair for putting that on them or are they ok with it?

How did the Warden deal with Connor? Is he or Isolde dead? What was the Warden's rationale to resolving the issue as they did?

If the Warden was trapped in a nightmare, what would it be like?

Did they help the mages or did they go with Cullen's plan? Why?

How did the Warden react to the truth of the werewolf curse?

Did the Warden end Zathrien's curse?

How does the Warden feel about the Deep Roads?

What did the Warden think when they saw the Archdemon in the Dead Trenches?

Who did the Warden choose as the new King of Orzammar and why?

How did the Warden feel about the Anvil of the Void?

What was the Warden's reaction to seeing Bryce/Shianni/Tamlen/Leske/Jowan/Trian in the Temple of Sacred Ashes?

How did the Warden feel about the Ashes? Are they religious or do they not care? And did they defile it or not?

Who are the people in camp that the Warden is closest with and why?

Is there anyone in camp who they do not like? Why?

Did the Warden romance anyone from their group? If so, what attracted them to their partner?

Which gifts would raise the Warden's approval, if they were a companion?

If Dog is in the party, what did the Warden name him and why?

Did the Warden complete the companions quests?

Did the Warden focus more on their objective or did they do side quests?

If the Warden was Captured, did they wait for their companions or did they leave on their own? If they waited, who rescued them and why?

How does the Warden feel about what is happening in the Alienage? How do they feel about how elves are treated?

During the Landsmeet, who did the Warden choose to rule Ferelden and why? How did they come to that decision?

How did the Warden feel learning about how Archdemons are killed?

Did they agree to Morrigan's ritual? If so why, or why not?

How does the Warden feel about being a Grey Warden and the sacrifices that entails?

If they could leave the Wardens, would they?

Who killed the Archdemon and are they still alive?

How does the Warden feel about becoming the Hero of Ferelden?

How is the Warden's personality like after the events of DAO? Did they change or are they still the same?

Did their appearance change during the game? If so, how? Did they change their hair? Did they gain any new scars?

Is the Warden still in contact with anyone after the game's events? Are they still with their love interest, if they have one?

Is there any decision that the Warden regrets? If so, which is it and why? How would they change it?

Do the events of the Fifth Blight haunt the Warden or have they moved past it completely?

How does the Warden feel about the Calliing?

ramblingroses

I'm going insane thinking about Zevran and his life as a Crow before Origins, connecting dots that were never meant to be connected, but it's so good, you don't understand.

Because Zevran and Taliesin have known each other since they were children and if their training killed 16 other children, their training must have been awful, so you know they were close and genuinely cared about each other, were probably each other's first love. And then they meet Rinna, just a few years later when they're like 11 and she's a bastard, elven blooded child of the prince and thus fascinating to two poor children, and they're all thrust into the life of assassination together.

They're thrust together into dangerous work, made even more dangerous with the politics surrounding Rinna, is it any surprise that the three fall in love? And maybe it's childish, a little naive, but it's still real, still safety and belonging outside of the whole system of the Crows.

Also, a little bit of headcanon, but as Compradi, Zevran and Taliesin don't really have a lot of expectation of upwards mobility, not compared to people who were born into the Crows. Compradi can technically advance to leadership if they're good enough, but the 'heirs' of a house usually don't let them live long enough to make a good attempt.

That's why they don't really excel until they meet Rinna, who wasn't born a Crow but as a daughter of the Prince does have some manner of political protection that Zevran and Taliesin just don't have. She has ambition and idealism that her position will let her protect her friends/partners/lovers (her family) and let them all advance into a better place. She knows they'll never be safe in the Crows, not really, but she can make them safer, at least. And it works.

And they're good together, really good. But then.

Oh, but then.

Rinna's 23 and someone has put it in her head that she could be put forward as the legitimate heir to Antiva and she sees opportunity. And then Prince Claudio Valisti, third Talon, learns about this and his house has another name to put forward and he sees Zevran, the man that killed his best friend years ago (Luis, Isabela's husband), and he decides to kill two birds (ha!) with one stone.

He frames Rinna for betraying the Crows (betraying Taliesin and Zevran) and sets it up so that they're the ones to kill her. And they believe it! Because they're Compradi, they're not as valuable as her, she didn't tell them, they believe that she was using them to advance her station and then she was going to leave them behind after years of working together, loving each other.

And then after Rinna dies, Claudio looks Zevran in the face and says it was all a lie, Rinna never betrayed the Crows, and that Zevran is nothing more than canon fodder, the Crows don't care, and one day his usefulness will be up and they'll kill him too, just like Zevran killed Rinna.

I'm going insane

#antivan crows

camelliagwerm-archive

DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS REPLAY→ 38/?

I don’t think I could turn down such a proposition. Good! Now come with me before I lose my patience.

#Leliana

Zevran: I was called shallow again.

Vergil: Mmm... You are as shallow as a pretty looking pond that swallows you under within a second.

Zevran: Aww, you think I am pretty? I could swallow you within a second, if you want.

Vergil: I think I could last longer than that.

Zevran: Could you? I thought you can't swim.

#WardenTxt #Vergil Surana #Zevran #little fic idea 🖋

nocturnal-stims

Flexible feather armor

🪽 Miscreations_us on IG

arysthaeniru

Also another gripe I have with Awakenings is the blatant lack of interest the narrative has in Mother. The Architect is a LITERAL Magister Sidereal. He comes across as pretty reasonable in his goals and motivations to undo the Taint for darkspawn, and he seems to exist as a person who's aware of what the world was like pre!Andraste! He's stupidly old. Even through the game underutilizes the potential of the Architect, by basically not allowing players to interact with him at all, he's given a lot of narrative weight. Most players pick him when it comes to the final choice.

But I wish the Mother was equally as interesting, and that the choice felt like a legitimate one. In Awakenings, the Mother has no goal and she's not especially interested in convincing the player to do anything—she wants the Wardens to die and the Architect die and everybody to become Tainted, because she's CRAAAAZYYYY and prefers the music of the Calling, and prefers the oblivion of non-existence. And I think this comes from the 2005 edgelord thinking that clearly originally conceived of the broodmother. While I think the broodmother can be read in DA:O as a vile, twisted reflection of the misogynistic practise of noble hunting that plagues Orzammar, and thus Hespith's fate, while more grotesque in visuals, is ultimately not so different from what she might have undergone in Orzammar itself—I think that's completely an accidental reading, you know? It's one that we as feminist thinkers impose onto the game. Even the Dark Ritual, which is peak body horror, coercion and pregnancy terrors, is just as callously treated as a way to 'reward' male players and Alistair, instead of Morrigan's plight being given narrative weight. It's not something the game is going out of its way to actually explore, and Mother proves that the themes around childbirth, body horror and violation, were kind of stumbled into by accident. Hespith craves death, because being raped and violated is too awful to live with. The Mother craves death, because being shaped into an object of reproduction is too awful to live with, and she'd rather not have personhood while fulfilling her function. It is a fundamentally misogynistic view to posit that post!rape and motherhood, one is fundamentally tainted and cannot live as a full human.

That being said, the bones around reproductive horror are there, and could be used to be something more deliberate and interesting! What does it mean for Mother to wake up after this horrific change has been imposed upon her? How might her opposition of the Architect be part of her fighting to come to terms with her new existence by accepting it? Finding reasons to continue on, justify why it was necessary or acceptable, because the alternative is terrifying? I think you can still do something interesting with Mother being an awakened broodmother that prefers being a darkspawn! And I think you can do this while assigning the darkspawn personhood, instead of saying that they wish to return to the oblivion of being slaves to the archdemon's Calling. Because, why would darkspawn who were born darkspawn, want to be anything else? Sure, the darkspawn who were turned, who have vague memories of being a human or a dwarf or a Qunari might wish to return back, but why would genlocks and hurlocks who were born that way desire to be something else? Why would the Mother's children be benefited by the Architect's plan? I think there's a lot that can be done with this split, when we engage with darkspawn as people with cultures/hierarchies!

Another tack you could take to make Mother more interesting is to enhance the concept of the Calling—if it is more than the forbidden siren's song—we can make Mother's argument slightly more compelling for the Wardens! I think there's a way for the Mother to essentially argue that connection to the Calling of the Old Gods is the same as being connected to the Fade? That what the Architect proposes to do to darkspawn is akin to Tranquility? That without access to the Old God's song, without access to this wellspring of creativity and artwork, darkspawn are made lesser? Of course, this would require the Calling to be more than it is, and for darkspawn to have something more of an artistic culture among themselves, but I don't think that'd be hard to do (see my previous post about this).

I also think that, at its core, Dragon Age is a game about faith— the consequences of faith, what happens when faith falters or is challenged, the atrocities justified in the name of faith. And at the core of the argument here is the question of faith, is it not? The Architect was once the Magister Sidereal, High Priest to Urthemiel. Urthemiel whispered to him and told him to open the Black City, and as a result, The Architect lost millennia to the Calling, and is transformed into a darkspawn—an outcome, he's clearly not pleased by. Fundamentally, I think the Architect's core tension should be that he has lost faith in the Old Gods' plan, and that the Mother still has faith! She should be accusing him of blasphemy (and of course, indulging in blasphemous thoughts and moments of doubt herself, yet ultimately doubling down).

Darkspawn personhood!!! It matters to me!!

#DAworld

the-cryptographer

You absolutely won't catch me being consistent about this headcanon, but I do wonder sometimes if the Grey Warden stamina thing is less about actual physiological changes in arousal and libido as much as part of the social ramifications of Wardens living in this co-ed communal military environment, meeting with one another in these fleeting engagements between being sent out on different assignments in the Deep Roads that they may never come back from, and having the risk of pregnancy and venereal infection be a bit null and void given the blight they're all carrying around. Like, idk, you might as well embrace the ephemeral nature of existence and casual sex with whoever you're feeling a connection with in these circumstances.

the-cryptographer

I do think Anders would have an incredible rant about how this is very similar to the environment that leads to a lot of casual sex in the Circle, but when Wardens do it they get to be stereotyped as strong and commanding and sexually potent, and when Circle mages do it they get to be stereotyped as immoral and corrupt tempters and temptresses. (More about 'mage' being a gender in Thedas at 8 o'clock.)

#DAworld

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

endless winter