...you may all go to hell, and I will go to Thedas

Hi there. I'm Valerie, a writer who is quite possibly old enough to be your mother. Frequently ranty, occasionally NSFW. Pedantic about everything. Cis, hetero, she/her. The sidebar illustration is Nola Cousland and my avatar is Tessa Trevelyan, both by the amazing madnessdemon. If you want to know more, check those links at the top of this sidebar. I'll wait.

[valerie1972]

Dragon Age - in-universe books, stories, and plays

Resources You Didn’t Know You Needed And Maybe Don’t Need Anyway

Adding to my list of Resources You Didn’t Know You Needed And Maybe Don’t Need Anyway, here’s a list I’ve been compiling of all of the books and authors we know of in Thedas. You can sort and download to your hearts’ content; by default they’re sorted by author and then by title.

Author names have been converted to something akin to “lastname, firstname” when an equivalent doesn’t exist. Titles were kept intact when they’re used as part of the author’s official name but if they seemed extraneous I dropped them. As a good example, “Brother Ferdinand Genitivi, Chantry Scholar” is “Genitivi, Brother Ferdinand” on the table. “Unknown” can mean that it’s either not given or that it’s truly unknown in-world; there are also a few “Anonymous” authors.

The books, plays, and stories are gleaned mostly from Codex citations, but there are also things in there that are mentioned in other in-universe books (like the plays mentioned in The Compendium of Orlesian Theater and the novels rated by the Randy Dowager) and in other contexts in-game (like the list of books Solas requests at Skyhold and Varric’s published works).

This does not include things like diaries, letters, and other “informal” written communication, even if it’s used as a citation for a codex entry. It does include oral tales, especially stories told by Dalish and alienage elves.

If you see something I’ve missed, definitely let me know.

[valerie1972]

Reblogging because as of today we have a canonical name for Varric’s book about the Inquisitor’s adventures: All This Shit Is Weird.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/30/17630476/dragon-age-hard-in-hightown-book-dark-horse-varric-tethras

[valerie1972]

So in honor of the first DA Day after a new game, I'm reblogging this thing. I've added as much as I can from Veilguard and rejiggered some stuff, adding a "Source" column and notes on the column headings about the logic I used on stuff.

As always, let me know if you see something I forgot. I haven't gone through Tevinter Nights yet to make sure I've included all works referenced there.

[ectokelpeigh]

“minor character death” but not death of a minor character, just a character experiencing a non-major death

[ectokelpeigh]

I made this post with Danny Phantom in mind and that’s what most of the tags have been. I wasn’t surprised when I saw some anime-lookin names, Merlin, and some version of Robin. I’m upset I didn’t see this coming

[valerie1972]

Well if I was gonna rebagel something on tumblr after a four-year-ish hiatus, the thing that made me snortgiggle and references kid’s cartoons, anime, Arthurian legend, comics, and Jesus was probably a good choice.

[valerie1972]

So...how’s everybody doing? Anything of note happen in the past (checks watch) three years?

[valerie1972]

The Last Straw

Ok guys I guess I’m done with tumblr. I’ll probably make a post with my off-tumblr contact info but I think that’s it for me.

They flagged Dylan’s post-op surgery pic as adult. It’s literally the result of turning boobs that look like they belong to a girl into boobs that look like they belong to a boy.

@staff this exactly what you promised WOULDN’T happen with this policy change. Treating this like its equivalent to porn is damaging to every trans person in the fucking universe and every person who loves them. But who the fuck cares, right? Gotta chase that dollar.

[dalishious]

I think some don’t realize there are dialogue options that don’t lead her to telling the guards you tried to kidnap her. She merely flees when the fight starts.

Yep, if you actually stick to the plan and don’t give her up when she has explicitly stated and demonstrated that her life is in danger, thus, you know, the need to sneak out, then she never says anything.

That, and also what she says at the Landsmeet is entirely dependent on your decisions. It’s why I don’t think it’s fair to call it “betrayal.” Like, betrayal implies she has to adhere to the PC. And I mean, why would she? In her mind if you say you will not support her, you are valuing some rando’s bloodline over her skill.It’s just that she’s one of the only characters in the entire game that doesn’t automatically take the PC’s words as gospel, and that I guess pisses people off.

[becausedragonage]

Ahhh! This is my biggest fandom pet peeve. This is exactly right! Anora doesn’t betray you! She only gives the warden up if the warden betrays her first, thus leaving her with absolutely no option if she’s to escape safely. 

She’s got a fucking country to save. Why the hell should she be loyal to a rescuer who was willing to turn on her the first chance they got?

[valerie1972]

I always had chosen to surrender and not give her up, so I never got the exit “betrayal” which I agree really isn’t one. You have to give her up first, which I agree is a shitty move.

It took me years to figure out that the did/didn’t betray argument was about that exit and not about the Landsmeet.

-

She can betray you at the Landsmeet though, in certain circumstances. When you are rescuing her and she’s still in the room, she will promise that if you get her out she will support you in the Landsmeet. If she doesn’t like what you propose at Eamon’s estate, she will not just not support you but will actively claim you kidnaped her, which is definitely a betrayal of her original promise.

Not to go all High School Commencement on you, but “to deliver to an enemy by treachery” and “to fail or desert especially in time of need” are literally definitions of the word “betray.” Synonyms include backstab, double-cross, sell out.

She has ample opportunity during your conversation to say, “You know that I only told you that to get out of Howe’s clutches and don’t actually intend to jeopardize my reign or my father’s life, right?” making it clear that you’re negotiating for her cooperation and not just discussing what you’re agreeing to when you talk to her.

She could even say, “I know I said I’d back you but I can’t agree to letting my father die.” Anything but “Sure yes I agree 100% we are bros now,” followed by an accusation that might, for all she knows, get you killed. I don’t think she has to do everything the Warden says, but saying “I will do this thing” and then doing the opposite is a betrayal. That conversation is just that, a conversation - if either participant expects the other to just do what they say, the other really should shut them down. The Warden does Anora the courtesy of telling her they disagree with her and won’t back her. Anora does not do the same with the Warden.

Do I think that’s an unreasonable thing to do? No. She’s protecting herself and her father. Do I think it makes her a bad person? Ehhhhh, protecting the man you suspect of killing your husband/king and half the army is hard to quantify as a “good” person but she’s not necessarily bad. Does it make her untrustworthy? Yes, at least for the Warden.

Unless, of course, you choose to lie to Anora, as my Wardens sometimes do, telling her you’ll support her, in which case she doesn’t betray you, which really means that one of you is too trusting and the other is a betrayer and who is which depends entirely on your choices.

Almost like it was planned to give players agency or something.

[dracofidus-deactivated20200523]

I’m not a gamer, but Dragon Age has had such an impact on my life.

[omg-dragon-age]

*crying* I love Dragon Age and the people who created it so. damned. much.

[valerie1972]

Dylan and I just replayed the scene where Krem comes out to the Inquisitor on Monday and it took half an hour to get through because he kept choking up and hands-over-facing and generally being overcome.

The first time through he burst into tears, though, so... progress?

I’m glad there was a table between them when I introduced him to Patrick Weekes because I’m pretty sure there would have been non-consensual hugging.

Representation matters.

[valerie1972]

So uh all you tumblrs out there who are under the age of 45? Do me a solid and tell me if my kid is fucking with me by trying to convince me that “bet” is a thing.

[cobaltash]

[valerie1972]

Okay wait.

Tumblr user tessa1972 has a Trevelyan named Valerie.

Tumblr user valerie1972 has a Trevelyan named Tessa.

:x files music plays:

[valerie1972]

Dylan’s friend Theo is playing Inquisition and today Dylan went over to watch. According to Dylan, this is the conversation that ensued as soon as Theo’s Cadash appeared on screen:

Dylan: Uh, Theo, why did you make your Inquisitor look like my mom?

Theo: I didn’t - :looks at Casash again: - holy shit.

Never been a faceclaim before. Not sure how to feel about it.

[discyours]

People who believe that small children are proof that gender roles are natural are really on a whole other level.

A young child, using words she learned purely by mimicking the way others speak: I want to be a mommy when I grow up.

Y’all absolute Mensa candidates: Wow. This child is a blank slate. Completely unaffected by society. Guess lady-brains truly are the only explanation here, science deniers. 

[discyours]

Babies cry with an accent within a day of being born, and can even observe sounds while they’re still in the womb. There’s no stage of life where people aren’t already affected by socialisation, everyone who believes that nature can truly be separated from nurture is naive as fuck. 

[luminifera-archive]

I absolutely love this post just because of the “y'all absolute mensa candidates” at the top.

[crazy-pages]

So there’s this part of the mammalian brain called the neocortex. It’s the part of the mammalian brain which is basically a blank slate that just process input, figures out and predicts patterns from that input, and suborns autonomic processes to higher-level abstract patterns it works out from all that data. (On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins, excellent neuroscience book, I highly recommend it). And humanity’s whole Thing is that our neocortex has become massively oversized and completely taken over our brain, to the point where it directs the action of the rest of the brain rather than the other way around like in other mammals. That’s basically our whole schtick as a species, being run by this massive blank-slate pattern matching machine rather than preprogrammed instincts.

Other mammals are instincts with some learning thrown on top, but humans are basically only learning, with some residual instincts to make sure we don’t fuck up too bad. That’s one of the reasons why humans take so much longer to develop motor skills than other species, because our brain has usurped the typical mammalian in-born neural motor programming with a blank slate that has to just like … figure that shit out on it’s own. Human babies can’t even see properly when they’re first born, even though they have perfectly functioning eyes, because our brain replaced all that silly mammalian visual recognition software with the neurological equivalent of a blank sheet of paper, a pencil, a shrug, and “you’ll figure it out, go get ‘em tiger”.

And that’s a huge advantage! Evolution can only adapt a species really, really slowly, to changing conditions over millions of years. Typical mammalian neocortices are a fantastic patch on that which allow adaptation over the course of a creature’s lifetime, but they don’t allow for that adaptation to be passed on, and it’s still just a patch on the greater impetus of evolved instincts. But humans. Ohohohoh. Humans are nothing but adaptation. Our ability to mimic and pass on behavior means that we don’t need a lot of those built up evolutionary behaviors which change so slowly, because we just can figure that shit out by mimicry and raw learning anyway. So we just ditched most of it and a lot of what’s left now comes with a “you can learn to override this if you need to” feature. It’s a way, way more flexible and adaptable system than that old clunky “being a bunch of preprogrammed mental software” thing other mammals use.

So the idea that you can assume anything about humans’ intrinsic instincts by looking at their behavior when young is just ridiculous. From the moment we’re born we are tiny pattern matching machines, intaking and copying everything around us, because we literally do not have enough instinct left as a species to exist without pattern matching other’s behavior. We can’t even fucking see without having to learn it from scratch. But yeah, I’m sure intrinsic gendered social skills and housecare aptitude made the evolutionary cut when fucking sight and walking got the axe.

[valerie1972]

Oh god so my ex-husband is right and my excessive listening to Paula Cole (what he called “Angry lady music”) while I was pregnant is responsible for my kid being trans? I’m so proud.

[valerie1972]

So Deception is at it again with terrible anatomy.

I don’t know of anything in the lore that says that Qunari can separate their jaws to more easily swallow prey, but here we are.

[jessequick]

[rowanthestrange]

Bless Jodie Whittaker for portraying the perfect combination of a non-binary’s ‘help they’re splitting us by gender now what?’ and blending it with the trans ‘oh god it’s finally happening i’m being accepted as one of their own’ mood.

[anachronistic-cat]

Jodie Whittaker is my favourite Doctor. I’ve never had a favourite Doctor before.

[felassan]

Dragon Age 4 - Official Teaser Trailer

I suspect you have questions

[valerie1972]

I am not okay.

[valerie1972]

I am almost done turning Dylan’s old room into an office and I finally have all my Dragon Age paraphernalia in one place.

There might be too much?

(And yes I realize that it is not all Dragon Age)

[dalishious]

A Tutorial:

Person A: I love Cullen, I think he's a great character who's changed a lot through the series and that's interesting to me

Person B: I don't like Cullen, I can't get past what a terrible person he has been, especially in DA:2, and his part in DA:I is not enough to satisfy me

Person A: I respect that we can have differences in opinions over fictional characters within reason while still getting along, here is a picture of a nug

Person B: I respect that we can have differences in opinions over fictional characters within reason while still getting along, thank you for sharing the nug picture

[bigbigtruck]

Wwwwwwelp

I’m backing up my 9 years of posts (using TumblThree: https://www.jzab.de/content/tumblthree) and just letting this account go, I guess. I’m not a primarily-NSFW artist, but 1. i’m back doing life drawing, which means nudes, and 2. I’ve always prided myself on depicting consensual, happy sexuality without shame, aaand neither of those are OK under Tumblr’s new rules. So. 

You can find me at: patreon.com/bigbigtruck <— THIS ONE HELPS ME LIVE AND PAY BILLS N SHIT. A little more than half my art posts are public; NSFW and process/tutorial content is patron-only. Even if you can’t pledge, you can still see new art and stuff. My Art Portfolio twitter.com/bigbigtruck pillowfort.io/bigbigtruck ek.weaver @ Instagram (I need to use this more) bigbigtruck @ Plurk (sparse, mostly personal/casual) bigbigtruck @ Facebook (extremely Sanitized For Family™ and casual) Yuri on Ice stuff is bbt_yoi @ twitter but this one is 18+ and I don’t follow back English language accounts jsyk So see you space cowboys, imagine me waving goodbye on a glitchy screen. I’ll still post stuff here as long as I’m able, but ennngh, I’m prob'ly gonna get nuked.

[bigbigtruck]

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