sneakyneighboururchin

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my fellow anders enjoyers gave me prompts to doodle and this is the result

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young solas for @/suzthesnooze on twt

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Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Isabela 1/?

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Hi Harker! I've seen a lot of similarly sour references to Gaider around - is there a reason so many people dismiss him nowadays? I haven't been on the fandom side of Dragon Age until recently so I was wondering if you could explain why he seems to be so polarizing

uhhhhh well i get all of this secondhand because i am a relative latecomer to dragon age and don’t use twitter or bluesky or anything, but he says things on the internet. many of which are bizarre, some of which are racist. the infamous “militant islamic borg” description of the qun, the long-standing idea that there were no asians in thedas, and i’m sure other things i’m not thinking of off the top of my head. and none of this is restricted to merely being bad takes online because he is one of the main builders of thedas so it’s all in there in dragon age’s DNA

he’s also really, really bad at writing novels. and in every single one of them writes the most textbook misogynistic “strong female characters” (she’s strong because she has a sword and she’s Not Like The Other Girls, also her entire story revolves around a man) i’ve ever seen in my life

otherwise, because he’s the original dragon age writer, it tends to be the “everything since dao was garbage and not Real Dragon Age” crowd that hangs on his every word. in my experience. which is irritating. he brought a lot of what dragon age is to dragon age for a long time and i’m sure having a gay lead writer from the start was fundamental to dragon age having the inclusivity it does have. but also i think we are long since past the point when we can stop acting like one white guy with opinions is the be all and end all of dragon age

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what if we were crazy in love (you give me lyrium poisoning) but we're taking it slow (exposure therapy, but i can tank it cause i'm a dwarf)

(my rook is a they/them lesbian)

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I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night

– Sarah Williams

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i like pretending that the reason lucanis makes being a crow sound like a breeze is not because they retconned the crows to be the good guys but rather because he is a nepo baby that got special treatment

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wanted to draw/design my dao gang all together (then i got slightly carried away and did camp outfits too)

(commission info // tip jar!)

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i think it’s a little unfair to compare spite and justice’s ability to act normal against each other, or to act like spite just being a misbehaving cat diminishes how hard it was for anders justice to cope with possession. spirits in the material world get upset when they can’t fulfil the pure ideal they seek. spite is a creature of spite and gets to kill people trying to hurt it basically all the time. justice is a creature of justice and was living in fucking kirkwall

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bellara saying "why couldn't you stay a memory?" when she meets cyrian again now under anaris' tutelage vs solas cowering in front of the fragment of mythal that was locked away when elgar'nan killed her after he's erased all his regrets stemming from his time in her service off his walls in the lighthouse.

something something in grief we only see the best parts of those we've lost. something something memory is a traitor. something something solas' own memories are akin to that of a tree trying to grow up towards the sun to ensnare it. something something reality is often disappointing compared to the memory / fantasy. something something bellara thought her brother's death was staining her hands and through his memory she resigned herself to history and fixing the veil artifacts and now that he's here and he's actively harming their people she has no choice but to confront the idea that her brother is not who she remembers him as.

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Okay so clearly the Lighthouse book club is kind of like movie night except those haven’t been invented yet

But hypothetically

Here’s movie night with the crew

Harding: you know it’s a complete gore fest. Every single Saw movie you’ve ever heard of, plus the ones you haven’t, Hostel, Terrifier, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. you definitely lose some people before the night is over bc it’s just TOO bloody but at least Harding and Taash are having fun. Lucanis and Davrin sit there complaining about how that’s not what it looks like when you draw and quarter someone

Neve: It’s all noirs, murder mysteries and psychological thrillers. Maybe some Blade Runner for diversity. She solves the mystery 5 min into the movie but won’t tell you the answer. Bellara is taking notes on everything and Neve looks over occasionally and nudges her in the right direction. The tragic antagonists make Emmrich sad

Bellara: Think she’d do a little bit of everything? But there’s definitely at least four documentary feature films on wildly variable subjects. She’s going to put on like Planet Earth, and then an Elvhen history one, and then like How It’s Made for some number of hours and then you look up and you’re halfway through the extended edition of Lord of the Rings

Lucanis: oh man. You’re watching Atonement, The Notebook, 50 First Dates, When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle; whatever corny romcom you can think of. And then he’s playing the entire catalogue of Hallmark movies. You thought this movie marathon was only one night? Ha! This guy is mainlining caffeine and hasn’t slept in four days, you’re going to exist in a haze of sleep deprivation interspersed by emotional confession scenes. Have fun

Davrin and Taash: they are teaming up to make you watch the entire Fast and the Furious franchise, all the John Wicks, the Independence Days (I think it has sequels?), the Expendables, the Top Guns, I don’t know any more action movie franchises. Things are going to explode, preferably with a lot blood so that Harding is happy too. When everyone falls asleep Davrin puts on Marley and Me to watch with Assan

Emmrich: Mr Art House Cinema over here. I hope you love reading subtitles because at least 50% of it is in other languages and involves people soliloquizing for three minutes at a time and then staring at barren landscapes forlornly. Also at they’re all preoccupied with death in some way. What was that movie where Daniel Day Lewis was a clothing designer and his wife was poisoning him but he was into it? You watch that. You only watch a movie per week though because you have to have time to think about the artistic merit of each one

*I forgot Bellara would love Mythbusters

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Boy’s night at the Lighthouse got out of hand :-/

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I know they'd be homies once I see Davrin kept approving of Rin's unquenchable thirst for violence

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Someone was being a fucking hater on my explicitly positive DATV post AGAIN (u all know I can see your tags right. They get delivered to me express mail style) so here’s an essay about how I thought the Grey Warden plotline was great:

First, it was extremely lore-consistent. I don’t know how to tell people this, but the Grey Wardens simply are sort of shady— it’s part of their charm. In DAO alone we found out they:

- kill anyone who refuses the joining

- are definitely using a blood magic ritual to induct people

- tried to usurp the throne of Fereldan

In DA2 they:

-Forced Malcolm Hawke to perform a blood magic ritual against his will to contain Corypheus, by threatening to kill his family

- Built a giant prison in the mountains they didn’t tell anyone about and that someone could wander into and not be able to escape

- the entire Corypheus thing. They didn’t even tell the other Wardens like what he was or how dangerous he was.

DAI:

- the demon army thing was pretty bad

And that’s not even mentioning any stuff from the books or comics or shows! That’s just stuff in the games!

So they’re shady. It’s okay! They’re my little woobie guys, idc if they’re sort of shady!

But the plot in DATV is about all of those previously established issues coming back to bite them in the fucking ass, as they should! Knock knock, it’s the consequences of your actions, baby! The chickens are home to roost

(Which is just good storytelling. Like if you set up a bunch of issues and then never pay them off or anything that’s bad.)

Destroying Weisshaupt was inspired! Firstly bc Davrin is Weisshaupt, metaphorically (bulwark against the darkness, etc, I already made a post) so it serves his character arc. But also because it strips away the pageantry and the grandeur from them; no more castle for you! No more myth!

Davrin explicitly tells you that the First Warden is a traditionalist; he represents the historical attitudes of the Wardens. They do not accept help, they do not give up their secrets, they are standing alone against the dark. And it doesn’t work! He’s fucking wrong (and very punch-able). Being secretive and isolationist is a mistake that costs them nearly everything.

But also, and I’m not sure how many people experienced this on the first go-around, the game does ultimately come down on the side of the Wardens always trying to do the right thing. You CAN talk the First Warden down, because in the end he’s a Warden, and he might be stubborn and curmudgeonly and miserable but he CARES about the world. He came to do good. He admits he was wrong and he helps you. Because the heart of the Wardens is about selfless service to other people. In Death, Sacrifice.

Stripping away Weisshaupt and the glory and pageantry leaves the Wardens at their most vulnerable and forces them to return to their fundamental principles: helping people. That’s what Lavendel is about. Helping individual people and preserving every life possible even if it doesn’t feel that glamorous or heroic. Lavendel isn’t a significant place; it doesn’t matter, but it matters so much.

And then, the Cauldron.

First off, do not at me about Last Flight. I don’t think people should have to read external materials to play this game and understand it. If the information is vital it should be presented to the player in the text.

The Cauldron is the repository of the Wardens’ secrets; it’s where the keep the bones of the Archdemons, the secret to the Joining, ancient and dangerous weapons, as well as the bodies of the griffons, which represents their most shameful errors. Isseya is the avatar of the Wardens’ mistakes; she’s been hurt by what they made her do, and her pain was never acknowledged by them. They buried her story and her suffering like they bury everything they don’t want to deal with and are ashamed of. They left the bones of the griffons, whose deaths they directly caused, to rot because they were too sad to acknowledge them.

But it was wrong to walk away, it was wrong to bury it. Isseya makes sure that they can never do that again, that they have to own what they did and take responsibility. By discovering who she is and by restoring her personhood to her, by reminding her of her love which drove her to her anguish in the first place, Davrin saves her and he saves the griffons. He doesn’t do it using violence, because another sin of the Wardens is just assuming that they can kill their way out of their problems, which the game disproves by revealing the origin of the Blight. You can kill as many darkspawn as you want, you will never fix it! The Titans’ dreams do not need to be slain, they need to be healed.

Isseya is in so much pain because of her incredible love for both the griffons and the Wardens, and because of her guilt. Look what she builds! An alternate Weisshaupt, a distorted reflection of her home. She entreats both Davrin and Assan to join her, because she doesn’t think she’s trying to destroy anything. She’s trying to save them! She wants them to come home. “I am their mother,” she says, and she’s right. She saved them, then, and she ends up saving them now! Because she made Davrin and the other Wardens look, unflinchingly, at what they had done, it will never happen again. She was going about it wrong during the game, but she was ALWAYS trying to save them.

Davrin, Antoine and Evka represent the Wardens’ commitment to being different. They let Flynn undergo the Joining without becoming a Warden, they reveal secrets to non-Warden Rook, they offer to help the Viper without asking for anything in return. They ask for help and offer it freely. If the Wardens are going to persist into a world without Archdemons, they HAVE to change. They can’t be what they were anymore. The game is asking what a Warden is when they have to be more than their oath, when they have to live. It’s a great exploration of and expansion on previously established lore.

Anyway, my advice if you hated the plot and the game and the characters is to a) make your own post b) don’t bother me about it, because I have the time and I will be loudly positive in response!

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look someone's gotta test the fall damage of this place

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fought zara renata

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Making myself sick thinking about how in the Luncais romance scene, if you choose the alarmed “I didn’t think I’d see you again either” dialogue choice, Rook expresses doubt that they ever actually left the Fade and wonders if they’re still imprisoned there, dreaming this moment up. Lucanis reassures them twice that they’re in the real world, with him, and then grounds them with a kiss and a promise.

And you know who else spent a significant portion of the game still mentally trapped in a prison, deeply traumatized and in pain, with parts of himself unsure if he ever truly escaped the Ossuary?

I really wonder if there was originally meant to be some version of the “You’re really here / I swear” conversation coming from Rook during or right after the events of Inner Demons because goddamn if that isn’t the most delicious narrative parallel