#lukas kristjanson

[vangbelsing]

Mary Kirby confirmed on bluesky that she wrote Illario and split the writing of Teia and Viago between herself and Lukas Kristjanson!

Apparently Lukas wrote the Crow faction quests as well.

[larkoneironaut]

My Tevinter Nights art project 🖋️🔮:

—Genitivi Dies in the End—

written by Lukas Kristjanson

Not me continuing this project almost 8 months later 💀

[anneapocalypse]

And then you take someone like Luke – Lukas Kristjanson – who for Sera invented his own slang, using Cockney as a basis, but it’s not actually Cockney, and he would get actively annoyed when people called it Cockney, correcting them that it’s actually 17th Century slang terms... and we were like, “Write it down,” and he’d answer, “Oh, yes, yes, I’ve gotten it written down, here’s what everything means…”

- Patrick Weekes, on how Sera's writer developed her voice (from an interview on Dumped, Drunk, and Dalish)

[jzargo]

Grey Wardens and Broodmothers

So, around a year ago, back on my main blog (before I'd quarantined everything over here) I made a post about how poorly thought out the role of female Wardens was, especially considering the horrific revelation of what Broodmothers are (and the implication that female Wardens would become them if they went down into the Deep Roads and were captured). Since then, I've received replies and comments all claiming, to similar extent, the same thing:

"The Joining makes Wardens immune to the Taint, and Wardens are infertile anyways"

And I'm here to say....neither of these things are true, and female Wardens are at risk of becoming Broodmothers.

So, let's unpack this.

The Joining doesn't make the Wardens immune to the Taint so much as it does give them a very slow exposure to it. It will eventually turn the Wardens into a full-fledged ghoul, the process just takes longer. This is why they respond to the Calling by going into the Deep Roads and dying an honorable death: it's preferable to slowly turning into a Ghoul and joining the Darkspawn hordes. It's reasonable to then infer that this could be accelerated by the process that potential Broodmothers undergo (as that is a much more horrific and invasive process than typical Taint exposure). And even if the Joining made female Wardens immune to becoming Broodmothers, this needed to be said in-game in no uncertain terms, not left to inference.

Wardens are not made entirely infertile by the Joining. It makes them less likely to conceive children, but they still can have children. David Gaider himself has said this (on the now-deleted bioware social forums) "A Grey Warden can have a child… just not with another Grey Warden...Grey Wardens have a limited chance of conception with a non-Grey Warden, but it does happen" And, again, even normal, non-Warden women do not produce babies at the rate that Broodmothers do. Whatever happens during the transition to Broodmother does something to majorly boost fertility in the victim. It is, again, reasonable to assume that this process could entirely circumvent whatever lowered fertility rate female Wardens have.

And this is the most damning piece of information I found...David Gaider himself, when asked this very question, admitted he hadn't thought of whether or not a female warden could become a Broodmother, but acknowledged it was a possibility.

Q: Do Grey Wardens still do the Calling, now that they know about Broodmothers? That was a really terrifying revelation in the first game "Oh my god, any women who are down here in the Deep Roads get taken off to spawn horrible monsters!" DG: They always knew about Broodmothers, but they didn't know where Broodmothers came from. Knowing that…wow, I hadn't really considered whether they'd stop doing the Calling. I think if anything it makes it more problematic for female Wardens to do the Calling. That may be something we could incorporate into the future. It'd be an interesting question. Let's say a female Grey Warden starts to hear her Calling and says "Well, my time has come" and the rest of the Wardens say no, you can't go. You're a woman. You don't deserve to take part in what has been long, for many centuries, held as an honorable tradition, as a way for the Grey Wardens to go out in a way where they retain…I don't know if you read The Calling, the novel. The reason they do the Calling is because there's a tipping point at which the corruption in them starts to affect them physically, so rather than become some kind of ghoul they want to die while they still have their humanity, doing what they've spent the majority of their life dedicated to, killing darkspawn, one last hurrah. To go to a woman and say "No, you can't have this honorable ending because of what might happen to you." I think that would be an interesting story. I think in the end it might be up to the individual Warden. I could definitely see a female Warden who would rather kill herself than allow for the possibility that she could be transformed into a Broodmother.

So, in short, my original point still stands. They writers (or at least David Gaider, and very likely Lukas Kristjanson, who wrote the A Paragon of Her Kind questline) did not think about the implications of this. They should have. They should have let female wardens unpack this horrific information they receive, either with Alistair or Riordan when they find him.

If they've since added something to the lore, if they've retconned this entirely, if a new World of Thedas book has confirmed female wardens do something different than going into the Deep Roads, that's great. They should have thought about that when first writing this, though.

And what's especially infuriating is it almost seems like they're alluding to it when a female warden first meets Alistair! He outright says "I always wondered why there were so few women in the Wardens." It would be so easy to circle back to that off-hand comment he makes that originally just seems like the writers being a little sexist (which, it is).

So. Yeah. Female Wardens can become Broodmothers. The writers did not think about the implications of this.

God I hope we don't see any in Veilguard.

[symphorine]

man. im finally reading tevinter nights and i rly liked both the horrors of hormak and down among the dead men, found three trees to midnight ok, but ive reached callback and it's uh. not great. i usually like focusing on minor/peripheral characters bc its interesting to get that perspective, but the writing is not great and its taking me out of the story a lot rip

[a-drama-addict]

every time i play dai and talk with sera i just. want to be nice. Why is this an impossible task

[niofo]

unstoppable force (analyzing themes of regret between tevinter nights and veilguard) vs. immovable object (lukas kristjanson's rubbish writing)

[coffeeworldsasaki]

Oh Sylvia Feketekuty wrote the short story in nevarra and luck in the garden!!! I love luck in the garden, in case Dorian appears I hope she's his writer because she really had his tone perfectly

[thedragonagelesbian]

just recruited sera!! on the one hand, my wife!!!!! on the other....................................................................................................

[bi-mirandalawson]

Playing da:i again and Again and Still I am infuriated at how it’s just kind of assumed that you will hate Sera. She’s the only companion with the ‘you don’t fit the inquisition’ kick-out button right on the first wheel, and in most of the conversations I’ve had with her so far, it’s so hard to just. Agree with her. Yes I understand how the red jennys work. I think it’s brilliant. But I can’t actually Say that. I can say ‘well it works, so that’s good’ and that’s it.

[pblovesjelly]

if you don’t have deep animosity towards at least one BioWare writer, can you really say you’re a fan of the games

[giantsreach]

lexie’s post just reminded me but i feel Very Strongly abt people trying to argue that templar carver doesn't internalize at least some ( if not a lot ) of the order's dogma.

i love other carverposters, but our boy is not helping the mage underground. he is not subverting the order from within. he comes into the templar ranks with certain expectations as to what good he can do and is, quite frankly, put into his place. he becomes more rigid in his thinking. he’s not as reactionary as some of the extremists in the circle, no ( and what a laughably low bar to clear, besides ), but that doesn’t mean he’s good.

don’t forget that ser carver is part of the retinue surrounding meredith in the endgame. this idea i’ve seen that he’s somehow taking advantage of the conflict to save each and every mage or kill his fellow templars is . . . unfounded, to be generous. carver turns on meredith only because there are no conditions, no contingencies where he hurts hawke. family is a core tenet of his belief system. he’d be betraying himself.

[vigilskeep]

Who is the Kristjanson guy you don't want to write a companion? Did he fuck up a past companion? I'm new to DA and don't really know anything about the writers or anything that goes on behind the scenes.

lukas kristjanson. he’s been a part of the series from the beginning and i’m not saying he’s never contributed good stuff! he wrote quests i love, like dao’s a paragon of her kind and dai’s in your heart shall burn. but he has a very questionable history writing wlw. he wrote sera, whose romance and writing have their, uh, issues and controversies. he wrote the leliana’s song dlc which heavily features leliana/marjolaine, and presumably wrote branka/hespith if he wrote a paragon of her kind, which are probably less glaring when taken on their own but together are two major contributions to dragon age’s weird pattern of all canon wlw relationships being super toxic for some reason. on top of that, and i don’t know anything about this really bc i don’t go here, but i hear bad things about his writing of black characters in mass effect

so i’ve been pretty concerned (and i’m not the only one) ever since a black man and two wlw became the last companions we didn’t know the writers for. it’s just harding left, which unfortunately i feel would make sense for kristjanson, who has historically written dwarf-y content, fereldans, and inquisition archers... but afaik we also still have sheryl chee unspoken for, another veteran who has been writing major characters and quests since origins (leliana, wynne, oghren, dog, sigrun, velanna, isabela, blackwall). she’s written dwarves too, and wrote the mage origin and circle quests in dao, so you’d think this is the person to go to for a dwarf that suddenly has magical abilities, right? she is also still at bioware while kristjanson was among those laid off, though that doesn’t necessarily mean anything either way

[vonneschlecht]

okay if you see folks get ecstatic that lukas kristjanson isn't the main writer for any of the companions.

this is because his previous characters are Sera, Carter, and Aveline.

[rexinasuperomnes]

Got a new theory about Solas and his identity, contains spoiler-ish stuff from the game informer article

So, I just reblogged a post by @arlathvhenan about solas being the Irish word for “light.” In Tevinter Nights, the story “Genitivi Dies at the End” by Lukas Kristjanson, Rasaan says, “The name given when [Solas] lied to us - and to your Inquisition - was chosen by a self-styled martyr. ‘Solas’ is also not true” (311).

So what if Solas’s true name means light?

Solas himself says, “I was Solas first. Fen’Harel came later.” But what if Solas isn’t his original name?

The Game Informer article revealed that the Lighthouse is actually his home, near the Crossroads. The house of Light.

What if his true, original name is the elven word for light, which could also be translated as the sun?

In the codex entries about Elgar’nan and Mythal that we find in Origins, we learn a creation myth featuring those two, the Sun, and the Earth. Link Link

To summarize those, the Sun grew jealous of the Earth’s love and attention toward Elgar’nan, and destroyed everything the Earth had created for him. Elgar’nan threw down the Sun in a rage into the depths of the Earth. The heat of the Sun cracked the Earth, and her tears filled those cracks to become the ocean. (“Elgar’nan’s pride was great”) Mythal was created by her tears and was able to reason with Elgar’nan to release the Sun from his prison. Elgar’nan, “humbled,” agreed, and Mythal created a sphere to house the Sun so his power would never burn the Earth again.

In those codices, there’s also some fun wordplay with pride and humility, as well as direct mention of the Sun feeling remorse, with regret supposedly being a major theme in Veilguard.

Many people have theorized that Solas was a servant of Mythal in some fashion, based on his armor, the placement of wolf statues around her temple, comparison to Ghilan’nain and Andruil, and the fact that he had vallaslin at one point. What if his service to Mythal, or fealty or loyalty or whatever it was, started when she bound the Sun? What if the Lighthouse is what remains of the space Mythal created for him?

I would like to offer visual evidence as well. These images are from the 2022 trailer that gave us the name “Dreadwolf”

Look at how prominently the sun features in these images, framing him. In the image on the left, the sun is embedded in the Dread Wolf.

I know that the legends and stories we have learned are echoes, changed drastically over thousands of years, but the names have been correct so far. I’m so excited to learn more with Veilguard coming out.

[grandpasauce]

hold hands everyone quick prayer circle that Lukas Kristjanson wasnt assigned to write any of the companions in veilguard

especially the women. im beating him away with a stick PRAY QUICK