Just a lil in love with Dragon Age @taliisplaying - Tumblr Blog

So I’ve been playing a lot of skyrim lately, because it’s video game comfort food, and I decided it was time for my Redguard Dovahkiin to settle down. (Actually I specifically just wanted to be able to adopt some of the random orphans you meet because I felt guilty about them, but you need to be married before you can do that so that there’s someone at home to take care of the kids while you’re off galivanting).

So I travelled around a bit, chatting up likely looking npcs until I found one I both liked and didn’t feel guilty about marrying (I feel bad if I marry one of the warrior adventurer types, making them be a stay at home mum) and settled on an obnoxiously cheerful argonian called Shavee because her life was frankly shit, and I thought she’d probably be good with kids.

So off I go to Riften to the Temple of Mara to arrange the wedding. I book it in for the next day, realise I didn’t bring anything nice to wear, and spend the night before the wedding robbing every house in the city in the search for something to wear. Eventually decide everyone in Riften has terrible fashion sense and break down everything I stole into raw materials and use them to craft myself an outfit and some jewellery that i’m pretty happy with. I even carefully pick out my fanciest looking sword to wear.

(don’t know why I bothered, frankly, shavee turned up wearing a shirt covered in suspicious stains and weilding a pickaxe, it’s like she doesn’t even care about this marriage)

(also for comedy purposes, bear in mind I play with survival mods that mean my character needs to eat and sleep to live, and I literally spent the entire ingame night on this and forgot to eat and drink anything either and then just downed four bowls of wolf stew right before entering the temple so I didn’t starve during the ceremony. also I discovered during the wedding that I am dying of rockjoint, which I contracted from sleeping in a pile of hay on the floor of a skeever infested cave, so even being six foot tall and jacked can’t make up for the fact that I am exhausted, running a fever, and probably covered in wolf which I spilled because my joints are slowly atrophying, and even the fanciest clothes in the world aren’t going to cover that up)

so I enter the temple, and my finance is there, and Lydia my housecarl, and some random NPCs the game thinks are my friends because I did fetch quests for them

One of the random NPCs is Lisbet. Atfter I did her fetch quest, I then did another quest in which I discovered Lisbet is secretly a cannibal and part of a demonic cult that worships the daedric prince of decay by kidnapping priests, sacrificing them, and then eating their corpses. Raw. I think the raw meat is the sticking point for me here honestly.

I ultimately decided not to sacrifice the random priest to a daedric prince in exchange for one magic ring and all the raw human I could eat, because frankly, that doesn’t sound like much of a deal to me. I was expecting there to be some kind of dialogue choice where I could nope out at the last minute, but it turns out there isn’t one, so after they drugged the priest and tied him to the altar, I just got out my sword and started swinging.

I killed most of the cult (including the town butcher, because I had brought meat from him before and was extremely pissed off that he might have been secretly feeding me humans) but a couple of them got away, which I figured was fine because they weren’t trying to kill me.

Except it turns out, if any of them escape, then every time you see them in the future there’s a random chance that they’ll fly into a violent rage and try and murder you.

Lisbet is at my wedding. Lisbet decides that clearly me marrying this random argonian woman with two lines of dialogue is the happiest day of my life, and she cannot allow me that happiness, when I’ve taken so much from her.

So she tries to kill me. Only she can’t, because I’m stuck in a pre-rendered wedding animation, and also she’s sitting next to Lydia, my faithful retainer and owner of a really big axe.

It also turns out that Lisbet is essential, meaning she can be knocked unconcious but not actually killed because she’s needed for some quest or other. And the minute she wakes up from unconciousness, she tries to kill me again, so Lydia knocks her unconcious again, and I’m stuck, I can’t move, because I’m supposed to be in the wedding animation.

Except Shavee has, not unreasonably, see all this and decided that she doesn’t like me enough to risk getting murdered, and has done a runner, leaving me at the altar, but more importantly, leaving me trapped in a broken pre-rendered animation, so all I can do is stand there at the altar, staring at the space where my fiance was supposed to be, listening to the sounds of Lydia trying and failing to beat a cannibal to death behind me.

Okay, I think, clearly this wedding isn’t going to happen, I’m going to go for the registry office option and complete the wedding using the dev commands. I do this. The priest gives me a wedding ring, and I can finally move again. I chase after Shavee, who has an impressive turn of speed on her, and eventually catch up right by the city gates. I try to talk to her.

Apparently using the console has completed the wedding for me, but not for her, because she still only has the same 2 lines of dialogue she usually has.

Clearly this is working, I can’t leave my kids with someone who can only say 2 things and doesn’t even know she’s their mum, that’s irresponsible.

I try loading from inside the temple. I get the same problem.

Eventually I figure out that I need to use the dev controls to disable Lisbet’s entire existence in the universe.

Shavee and me get married. As the priest reads the vows, I stare at Shavee and wonder why she couldn’t even be bothered to put on a clean shirt. I wonder what kind of mother she’ll be.

Once the ceremony is over, and I’m happily married to the dirty green lizard of my dreams, and we’ve agreed that until I can make her recognise my extremely nice modded house exists I will share her single bed in the unheated flophouse in Windhelm she calls home, I re-enable Lisbet, because I’m worried I’ll forget if I leave it too long.

Fun fact about skyrim, it loads in quite a lot of npcs and objects by dropping them from the sky. I have no idea why this is the case, but it’s objectively the funniest way to load in objects.

I re-enable Lisbet. She falls from the sky, clips through the roof of the temple, and lands in the pew beside Lydia, stands up, draws a knife, and is immedately beaten unconcious.

I no longer care, because Shavee now has all the exciting new spouse-only romantic dialogue options like “Could you cook something for me” and “have you made any money lately”, and I know she’ll be a great mother.

I limp to the door of the temple, while around me the guests not involved in the Lydia-Lisbet murder cycle scream and duck for cover.

I open the door to the temple, immediately collapse and ragdoll down the steps, which is how I discover I am dying of rockjoint.

I limp to the orphanage down the street, adopt two kids, and then finally remember that I’m carrying garlic bread, which as we all know, cures all known illnesses.

When I emerge back into the street, full of the joys of motherhood and garlic bread, I find the town in disaray. Lydia is chasing Lisbet through the streets with an axe and a dragon is circling overhead, burning npcs to death. People are running for shelter, screaming, while the guards try to take down an entire dragon using only the worst bows and arrows in the game.

I decide that as a parent, I have to think of my own safety first and leave them to it.

I head out of the city, intent on returning home and figuring out why Shavee refuses to move in with me. A man hanging around the stables challenges me to a boxing match. For want of anything better to do, I agree.

Halfway through the fight he dodges at the wrong moment and I punch one of his horses in the head.

Two guards attack me while I desperately try to surrender. My kids will miss me, but I’m prepared to go to jail for my horse crimes, I’m an honest citizen. Also my horse crimes seem somewhat less important than the dragon.

The guards refuse to accept my surrender. I am stabbed to death. As I collapse in front of the indifferent horse, Lisbet exits the city, followed by Lydia. The last thing I see before I die is Lydia swinging her axe at Lisbet’s face.

garrettauthor

“… so all I can do is stand there at the altar, staring at the space where my fiance was supposed to be, listening to the sounds of Lydia trying and failing to beat a cannibal to death behind me.”

This is the moment I started laughing out loud, and then I never stopped.

anjaax444

dulic from genshin impact sketches *:･ﾟ✧

harmonicwhispers

This conversation definitely happened

invinciblerodent

I love mage/warrior pairings. I love them. So much.

I love the warrior not even hesitating to put themselves between blades and their lover.

I love the mage pulling up a barrier as soon as their lover’s hand moves for the sword.

I love them fretting over one another because of the sucky light armor and the whole charging-into-battle thing.

I love them marveling at each other’s respective strengths, be it not faltering even under the fist of a giant, or throwing balls of fire without breaking a sweat. I love them seeing beauty where others might just see brute force or a looming threat of demons and blood magic. I love them swearing to protect one another to their last blood if they have to.

I love mage/warrior pairings.

commandermorgan

Comic commissioned by @visceralcoma . The prompt: Lady Vivienne mentions (to a human mage Inquisitor) a Senior Enchanter Lydia. Cole recalls memories of Blackwall’s younger sister Liddy, who passed away. But what if Blackwall was wrong about his sister’s death, and they were one and the same?

artpigeons

yeriel’s pissed

nipuni

Wisdom & Pride

A step by step process and layered PSD file of this will be available at my patreon on Jan 1st!

lavellander

it is a horrible day in kinloch hold, and you are a lovely anders

doctormage

don’t mind me. just Realizing Things about shit that pops up in my writing over and over again

iamnotacleverperson

Fenris’ “slouch” is not a slouch, it’s an athletic stance.

It’s not that he’s trying to make himself look smaller; he is fully aware of how powerful he is. When you see him walk normally, it’s with a swagger. His shoulders sway with an almost exaggerated confidence.

His stance is one that will allow him to fight or flee at a moment’s notice. His legs are always bent at the knee, balancing on the balls of his feet. His torso is leaned forward and his arms are always slightly extended to his sides so that he can draw his sword from his back at any time.

It’s a stance that belongs to a man who’s been on the run for so long that he carries it for seven years after he decides to stay in Kirkwall. (Granted, most of the time, he’s preparing to face Danarius.)

I think that that says more about his character than the interpretations that say he is trying to make himself look smaller, less threatening, or even submissive. None of those are true. He’s done running. He’s done being a slave and a fugitive. He will never bow to another living being again, not even subconsciously.

So, no, it’s not a slouch. It’s a habit that he developed to survive on his own.

And that’s who Fenris is.

lyonface

I thought about this post for a bit and decided to look at some of the game while keeping it in mind, and I agree with you almost completely.

These are shots from the early game. I won’t have any from the late game for a while, but honestly these are better in terms of explanation. He is confident when addressing Hawke from the very beginning, standing ramrod straight with fantastic posture and a serious stride. How he carries himself has to do with two things:

1) He did escape slavery, and escaped most recently from Danarius by brutalizing and murdering those directly in his way. The only person that he can credit for his current freedom his himself. He’s confident because he’s free, though this doesn’t necessarily reflect in personal, emotional matters, as players find out later.

2) Remember that when he was a slave, he wasn’t just a waiting servant. He was also a bodyguard. Yes, he was treated as a subhuman, and there are indescribable atrocities that Danarius and others have committed to and against him, but bodyguards are meant to carry themselves a certain way and look intimidating. If Fenris didn’t display perfect posture and unnerve Danarius’s guests, a Fenris briefly recalls at one point, I’m sure his master would have punished him for it. Yes, he was a slave and made to serve as most slaves would, but he also was forced into service as a bodyguard and fighter. If he didn’t at least fake confidence, he would likely have been hurt for it.

But what about in game, rather than cutscenes? Here are two examples of (interesting) idle animations of Fenris in your party.

He is alert, ready, and jumping at even the smallest sounds whether real or imagined. He is hunched over likely due to his ready stance, but also probably because he’s carrying a HUGE TWO-HANDED WEAPON ON HIS BACK. That’s not exactly light-weight, despite his great physique. He knows that Danarius is after him, and his filled to the brim with tension. Fenris’s more sensitive and unsure personality is something that we only see as Hawke when we are in private with him, when we talk to him about personal matters. That’s when his demeanor changes, because we are trusted and he can let down the walls he’s erected. In the field of battle, when hunters can find him? No, he is ready and waiting.