#pcg replies

[palecrepegold]

sinjja replied to your post “Instagram has just provided me with the information that Toni Kroos is...”

To be fair, his latest addition was a lion king tattoo. He's a softie.

I feel like I knew about this before but completely forgot. Definitely super soft.

[palecrepegold]

marzipanowls replied to your post “[[MOR] I just found out my office is closing, but they’ll be...”

Oh my gosh :( I'm really glad you're being kept on though!

I’m glad but I also feel really guilty, because not everyone got offered this chance. And it’s not happening for a few months, so things are just going to kind of hang in the air until then I guess? It’s really odd.

I need to kinda get my life straight before this goes into effect, because I spend a ton of time alone already--adding basically my entire job to that extra alone time will not be good for my mental health, so something will have to change.

[palecrepegold]

sve1tka replied to your photo “Oh check it out, some people talking in Liam O’Brien’s mentions came...”

iiinteresting! especially given that components include things like diamonds (for a 1st lvl spell!) which are scroungeable for your player-character types, but like, caleb's absurd incense-and-paper budget is more gp than the average peasant must see in a lifetime. idk enough abt dnd lore to know whether that's an inherent limitation to arcane magic or an intentional class barrier, but now i'm super curious!

On Talks Machina just now they said Caleb has spent ~650 gold on paper and ink so far in the campaign! That’s not even to get new spells, it’s just to transcribe them so he can use them, which is so wild. And he started out flipping his shit in happiness that Nott had 13 gold for him to buy books. It adds so much to why his world would absolutely be upended by the chance to go to the Soltryce Academy, which by everything we’ve learned so far seems like a free ride/all expenses paid kind of education, and why young Caleb would be feel so much loyalty to his teachers (on top of the fact that he clearly had a very patriotic upbringing).

I know to some extent it’s flavor, but I really think it’s significant that Caleb (and Liam as a player) emphasizes his spellcasting gestures and using the components. From what little bit I’ve looked into it, basically every generic material component (molasses, iron filings) is something the player can just assume they have on them as part of their general inventory, unlike the pearl for identifying magical items or the diamond for chromatic orb (and where did Caleb get that, I wonder? Did he say?). It’d absolutely be normal and fine for Liam to just say, “I cast slow,” and not elaborate at all, but he’s very particular in getting into the tangible aspects of being a wizard. And I personally think that’s part of Caleb’s story and how he had to essentially relearn magic after he left the asylum. Unlike the aristocratic/academic magic that young Caleb would have learned from esteemed scholars and high-ranking government ministers, everything he does now is scrounged from the basics, from stolen scrolls and dimestore components and literally a spellbook he found in a smutty bookstore. I know he was very afraid of being recognized at the Victory Pit, for good reason, but I think anyone watching who had a structured and formal magical education wouldn’t see a former Soltryce student in the way Caleb does magic now. And I think it’s fair to assume that a vast Empire with deep pockets would be able to educate and maintain powerful war mages that any insurrectionist groups or smaller, poorer neighboring countries wouldn’t have a chance against.

[palecrepegold]

2, 18, 19 and 20 plz

This got fucking long. And it helped me think about some aspects of my characters that weren’t particularly well fleshed out, which I really enjoyed!

2. What would your Hawke generallythink of your warden and your Inquisitor?  

Cait respects Milon, both because ofwhat she accomplished in ending the Blight and because she’s primarily heardabout Milon through Anders. Milon protected Anders when she didn’t have to, andtrusted him enough to give him actual responsibility within Vigil’s Keep, whichmeant almost as much to him. Back in the Circle, his obvious talent neveroutweighed the fact that he was junior to plenty of other healers andconsidered both flighty and a flight risk beyond that. At Vigil’s Keep, though,he ran their (admittedly small) clinic, & people in need of serioushealthcare from all around Amaranthine came to him for help. Milon didn’t thinkthat was a big deal—he was a healer, trained by one of her own companions, andthere was healing to be done—but it was a big deal for him, and the way hetalks about her to Cait reflects that.

Later on, Carver also speaks prettywell of her in passing in his infrequent letters home, and the fact that theWarden-Commander was able to get Carver to accept her authority without chafingunder it isn’t lost on Cait.

In contrast, Cait finds Gilead to bea little bit disappointing compared to the myth that grew up around her soquickly, and even the way Varric had described her. Gilead has a soft heart,and her inclination is that violence is only ever a last resort—after all, it’snot as if a Keeper can just go around busting heads when they want to solveissues within their Clan. She buys in very strongly to Josie’s “niceness beforeknives” ethos (part of what brings them together) and otherwise has a generallydiplomatic approach to running the Inquisition. Her judgements as Inquisitor,for instance, are never execution or anything else that’s irrevocable.

For Cait, who by that point has beenon the front lines of the Mage-Templar conflict for some time, this seemsdangerously naïve. Allying with the Redcliffe mages was a point in her favor,but since Cait’s aligned with a somewhat more aggressive group of mages thatdidn’t attend the Conclave, it’s not quite as big of a point as it could havebeen. They’re just very different people.

 18. What is the biggest similaritybetween your protagonists? 

This is kind of a facile answer, butthey all were thrust into much more prominent roles and had to take on a lotmore responsibility than they ever would have wanted themselves. Even Gil, whowas being trained for a leadership position, was expecting to have at least a decademore time to be someone else’s First and to assume authority gradually.

Beyond that, they’re all loyal andprotective people, but that manifests in each of them in different ways.

19. What is the biggest differencebetween your protagonists? 

How much they accept the worldaround them versus how much they fight against it. Once Milon’s forced tobecome a Warden, she accepts it, and she works very hard as theWarden-Commander. But in that role, beyond the big decisions that she wasforced to make during the Blight, she stays focused on Warden business andrarely uses her status as the Hero of Ferelden to effect anyone outside herdirect sphere of influence.

Cait, on the other hand, uses everyadvantage and every bit of respect she gets to push back against the authorityof the Chantry, the Templars, and anyone else whose power she thinks needs tobe resisted. With time, she learns to modify the way she uses that power—earlyon, she’s kind of a Force mage through and through. She pushes back, hard, againstwhatever she considers to be her opposition. Later, she develops other skills.She has a mode of thinking/acting she calls “Becoming Lady Amell” for when shehas to deal with either nobility or people for whom nobility means something,which is basically a somewhat successful impersonation of her mother. And,after years around Varric, she learns to lie better and to obscure herintentions when she absolutely has to. But she’s always a person who sees howthe world is and how it should be, and pushes hard for the latter.

Gilead would prefer to let the worldoutside her immediate concerns deal with itself, but as Inquisitor that isn’tan option, so she does use the large amount of power she ends up being handedfor what she thinks is essentially the greater good (like supporting Leliana asDivine, or telling Cassandra to not try to reform the Seekers, or protectingthe mages as allies). But she’s immensely relieved to disband the Inquisition,and she never really took full advantage of what she could have done with therole.

20. Who handles responsibility thebest? And who handles it the worst? 

Milonhandles it the best, because there’s always too much riding on her decisions tobehave any other way. And she has the most time of any of the three to growinto her leadership post-Blight. Cait handles it well when it’s in regards tosomething or someone she cares about, and somewhat less well when it’ssomething she’s been forced into. Gilead only handles it well when it’s withina realm she feels confident in and involves things or situations sheunderstands. Anything outside of that, she does her best to delegate to whoevershe thinks knows more. The big decisions she has to make as Inquisitor arefrequently overwhelming to her, and although it goes against canon, at momentslike Dorian’s confrontation with his father or Bull’s decision regarding theChargers, she lets them choose for themselves and supports them afterwards. 

[palecrepegold]

emberkeelty replied to your post: Hi! I got into Dragon Age fandom (and fHanders...

Omg YOU’RE ACTUALLY GONNA CONTINUE MORE FIRE THAN THE SUN I am so hyped!!!

As far as what’s actually on the page, Cait and Anders have made it out of Varric’s room and into the hallway. But more is coming, and I’m cautiously optimistic about how things will get going once they get to the Amell estate to figure out what the fuck Carver’s gone and gotten himself into.

[palecrepegold]

mswyrr replied to your post: Fuck Space Cullen tho, amirite.

wait - he’s supposed to look like cullen??? also: i wish it was just a broshep/femshep situation… it bothers me that on my canon playthroughs i will have to acknowledge his existence as her brother (and that she has a bit of a Man Family between him and her dad being the focus of her family)

I’m bothered by the very, very stale trope of the protagonist without a mother, especially with a military dad. That’s covered pretty extensively in, like, every 90s sitcom. Once again Bioware, The Progressive Video Game Company ™, doesn’t even go for the easy brownie points of having the remaining parent be a mother rather than a father. And that whole setup does really chafe in terms of making Ryder feel like your own character--being able to choose a few different major past life events for Shep helped avoid that feeling, but I’ve seen nothing in the promo stuff for Andromeda indicating anything similar in this game.

And, I don’t think he’s *supposed* to look like Cullen, but if you put their faces next to each other the resemblance is quite strong. There’s a post or two going around to that effect (Cullen, fleeing justice for his persecution of the mages, dyes his hair brown and escapes to space), so now I can’t see anything else when Scott Ryder’s face pops up.

[palecrepegold]

mylittlechimera replied to your post “To elaborate, briefly, on why I dislike that take on Corvo sparing...”

i like those tasty tags, they have the right edge to them, I could actually be interested in that story

Ahh, thank you, I’m glad you liked the idea! 

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Daud’s non-lethal should have been removing his Mark.

Non-lethals are about suffering, and letting Daud wander off alone has no actual aspect of suffering involved at all. He just gets to leave, to apparently retire to a small beachside cabin where he can drink cocktails all day and write his memoirs (according to the majority of fan art, anyway). All you have is his word that he won’t continue doing what he’s done for his whole adult life: use his Void powers to kill people for money. Even if Daud is sincere, and there’s no reason for Corvo to think that he is, in ten years’ time, when his current cache of blood money runs out, what’s to stop him from going back to his old trade? What if someone offers him even more money to kill Emily this time? There are too many unknowns, and too little reason to trust a man who just gloated about knowing what it felt like to shove a sword through Jessamine’s heart.

Cutting off his left hand first, though...that will leave him alive to suffer, remembering what he once could do and how he lost it. Spending the next decades of his life as an average person, even his non-supernatural fighting abilities reduced. Daud might still be something of a threat in this state, if he fought very hard to be, but not at all one that Corvo couldn’t dispatch easily if needed. That would be a true non-lethal neutralization.

Daud will grow old, and die, as no one special, just as he was born. The Mark convinced him otherwise for awhile; perhaps there was something unique to him in his youth, during his single-minded quest to contact the Outsider. But what I think the DLCs make clear is that Daud has wasted his gift. He has the power to change the world, and he uses it to kill for money. And perhaps most notably, he kills for money at the direction of others. He’s a weapon that others use--he gets a contract, he fulfills it. He has no vision or goal of his own beyond doing a dirty job and getting paid for it. The more I think about it, the more it disappoints me, and the more I understand why the Outsider became so bored with Daud.

Delilah uses the Mark to reshape the world, pushing and extending the boundaries of what her powers allow her to do again and again. Corvo uses it to right the course of the Empire by putting Emily on the throne and eliminating a deeply paranoid and dangerous Lord Reagent. Daud changed history by killing Jessamine, but he says himself that he didn’t realize what a destabilizing action that would be and how far the consequences would extend. He could have done anything, but he ended up only a pawn. Let him think about that for about forty or so years.

[palecrepegold]

drerahv-moved replied to your link “Dunwall Rust, Tyvian Rot - Chapter 1 - palecrepegold - Dishonored...”

DO IT!!! REWRITE THE BAD BOOK!!!! SPITE FIX-IT FICS ARE ALWAYS MY FAVES. GOOD JOB W/ THIS

THANK YOU! May spite motivate me, as well as the deep need for something creative to distract me from spending 24/7 reading political tweets while my anxiety spikes through the fucking stratosphere.