#''wynn you can just look up how to do it on youtube'' NO!!!

[heartburstings]

sonic frontiers 1-2 s rank you are my enemy and i will kill you

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL - All the Penultimate DOOM

Jan 2023 Wk 4

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs. Organized by which ones (in each category) I’m enjoying most. (Posted early this week cause I running a seminar all day tomorrow.) 

Ongoing Series - Thai

My School President (Fri YT) ep 8 of 12 - Gun is SO MUCH better at flirting than Tinn. Also Fourth is a killer little actor. GMMTV, man, how do they always find ‘em? The side couple is also getting to be good. Should this show be in the running for 10/10 status? Probably. But it’s never gonna get there because of all the singing. (I gotta stay true to my brand.) 

Never Let Me Go (Tues YT) ep 7 of 12 - I can see why everybody giffed the wrestling on the bed scene. It was v cute and a great opener. I like that the backstory we got was a good explanation for Palm and his father’s extreme loyalty. Fastest proposal to wedding I’ve ever seen. Outside of Vegas, of course. NO SINGING. OK the “this is how couples kiss” kiss was really REALLY good.

Between Us (Sun iQIYI) ep 11 of 12 - Doomy doom doom. Only not. It was more like doom lite. Except for those of use who hate singing. Then it was extra spicy doom torture. And unlike Pete, I do not like it. WATCH ALONG HERE.

609 Bedtime Story (Fri WeTV) ep 10 of 11 - Doomy doom doom, ALSO. GamesVee schilling for marriage equality. Has to happen every single show now? But at crying kiss? YES PLEASE. 6 month time gap. Honestly, WeTV didn’t serve me the first half of the ep this week, and I don’t really care. Apparently it was amnesia. Meanwhile, Mum stepped aside for emotionally immature obsessive sister. And now she’s marrying Dew. Bonkers. I hate this experience. 

Cutie Pie 2 You (special) ep 4fin - And a wedding, and everything sweetness and light, in Korea we are boys do not kiss like that, and the end. Honestly we didn’t really need this special, but I’m not upset about it. 7/10 RECOMMENDED BUT ONLY IF YOU’VE SEEN THE SERIES 

I Will Knock You (Fri Gaga) ep 11 of 12 - Doomy doom doom only pulp style. The parents, understandably, do not approve. Noey’s plans for the future are kind of cute. He’s such a baby. 

Hit Bite Love (Sat YouTube) ep 1 of 6 - Opens with a bj. That’s certainly novel. Honestly? This is giving me So Much in Love meets Club Friday vibes. Which is not a good thing. But starting with secret lovers (Ken & Shokun) breaking up is at least different. There is also a cute new kid in a friends-to-lovers geeky thing happening (King & Burger). Subs are TERRIBLE. But my Thai is good enough now for me not to mind as much as I once did. Do I like this show? Noo…oo? But I’m gonna keep watching it. I have a pretty high tolerance for Thai pulps. After all, I’m one of the few people on the planet who actually watched So Much in Love. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

The New Employee (Korea Weds Viki) ep 6 of 8 - Criminal how utterly gay and cute they are. Matching pajamas indeed. ALSO honorifics discussion!!!! Yay! (There was seal clapping on this side of the screen.) “Do you want to see my cat?” is a great pick up line. It would totally work on me. To be fair, “do you want to see my dog” would also work. Always been an equal opportunity player.

HIStory 5: Love in the Future (Taiwan Weds Viki) ep 5 of 10 (or 9&10 of 20) Wynn in the icebox = such an old-school trope, it’s practically kidnapping for love. Pouty McHotterton remains regrettably evil and should have been fired. Vincent is too nice for his own boy’s good. Then... random confession time! I guess extreme cold makes people brave/drunk? But why didn’t he take him to the hospital to get treated for hypothermia? I’m so confused. Still these office boys are so cute and sincere and awkward. They’re killing me  The other two are basically a married odd couple. Rich boy just wants to be looked after and coddled and spoiled. Jonny is very daring but also acts unconsciously and on pure instinct. I kind of like their dynamic. It’s sort of teasing, and cool, and modern. 

Candy Color Paradox AKA Ameiro Paradox (Japan Fri Gaga) ep 6 of 8 - Kenta  domination continues. Of course my beloved charismatic boy ends up being complex but evil. Could I just get a wholesome age gap BL starring him now, please? I’m not picky. He’d be GREAT in Our Dining Table... just saying. Sorry, distracted. Back to the main couple... they’re pretty I suppose. I do like how huggy they are.  Also, multiple kisses. What is this world coming to? All very unusual in JBL.

Individual Circumstances (Korea Thurs Viki) ep 3-4 of 8 - The stalking continues, and it’s boring. Korea doesn’t have any excuse to be boring, they don’t have enough time to spend on it in a BL. Stalker gets sick. Shocker. It’s a BL + rain. Still I’m very grateful that they take every opportunity to make Mr. Korean International shirtless. For science and the good of BL, we salute you! Frankly, I have no idea what’s going on. Did they actually have a relationship in the past? Or was it closeted? Or did one of them think they were in a relationship but not the other? On a different note and wat more important to me? I want the actor playing the agent to star in his own BL. He v adorbs. 

It’s Airing But I’m Not Watching It

GMMTV’s Midnight series (Weds YT)  - first segment has begun bit it’s not the EarthMix messy gays. I’m so not interested in messy hets, so I’m waiting until they grace my screen. Moonlight Chicken 1 of 8 - eventually.  

Gossip

Earth giving us, in one single photo shoot on Cooheart IG, what Unforgotten Night couldn’t manage in an entire fucking series. 

I read the first installment of the Semantic Error manwha (available in English translation legally). It’s similar to the show, although not exactly the same. Some scenes are in different orders etc. There’s not much of the story in the first installment, and I don’t think it was worth the money. The art was fine, pretty typical of the genre, nothing to really recommend it or stand out from the pack. If it did nothing else, it made me realize how much the Parks brought as their roles, because as manwha characters they did not resonate with me at all and came off as pretty flat. Brutal assessment, I know. You thought I was a harsh BL critic, I’m 1000x worse to books.  

The Controversy Surrounding Be On Cloud Actor Build Jakapan and KinnPorsche Author Poi Patchayamon - untagged, no comment & no comments welcome, this is not that blog. 

In Case You Missed It

I posted a meta of all my 2022 wraps, top picks, industry stats, etc..

I ALSO posted the 2023 forthcoming BL master post. (see comments some are inaccurate)

Next Week Looks Like This:

Light week right now, which is cool with me. I think I might get caught up on 2020′s The Reason Why He Fell In Love With Me, Gaga picked it up and I’ve been wanting to see it since it got announced in 2019. Japanese, teachers at a school fall in love with each other, get caught. 

Tomorrow: Between Us ends. 

The End Of The World, With You AKA Bokura no Micro na Shuumatsu from Japan starts on Gaga ep 1 of 8. Stars Toshiki Seto (Senpai, This Can't Be Love). In 10 days, the world will be destroyed by a meteor. To spend his remaining time as comfortably as possible, bad-luck magnet Masumi decides to visit the library of his alma mater and read as much as he wants until the end. But there he meets the one man from his past that he never wanted to see again, Ritsu. And if things weren't bad enough, Ritsu has a favor to ask, a favor that Masumi never expected

Supposed to air in Jan but I got nothing: 

Nilundon

Luminous

Time the series

This week’s adventures in captions:

Hit Bite Love: I applaud the use of singular they and am amused by the sentence construction that resulted. 

King actually said boy with boy (or boy+boy, or boy & boy - the conjunction is the same word in Thai) not homosexual. I haven’t heard this Thai phrasing used before in a BL and I liked it a lot. 

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

Between Us being all soft with their Ep 11. 

I love it when a show defines its own premise (NLMG).  

Blessed be the wingmen for they speak truth in BL (Hit Bite Love). 

FINALLY learning how to manipulate his boyfriend (got himself a tsundere praise slut, takes a bit of high handed managing that does). My School President, speaking of... 

Best line in a BL ever, but honey, I think he really wants you to give the orders. 

Let the single braincell club rise again! 

I see what you did there GMMTV, alluding to the pool kiss trope you basically popularized with OG PeteKao? Very clever. 

(last week)

Current Kpop earworm? Kang Daniel’s Parade. 

[misscammiedawn]

Hi Wynn, it’s nice to meet you. I like your writing style, have you considered writing as a hobby? Or do you have any other hobbies?

Dawn edit: Switched out while working on the video below, some of the post was written by me.

Appreciated.

Writing is Cammie's thing. Dawn if it's a media essay.

We used to code. For Ren'py visual novels. Back before we cut ties with the game studio we called Family. The lead dev even noted to us once that we dissociate when we code which is why we forget how to code between projects and then pick it up again when working.

Sometimes we wonder if he knew about our condition before we did.

As with many things after that break-up, we stopped doing it afterwards and haven't picked up since.

Dawn once wrote about our solo project. We have no intention of finishing it.

In recent months we coded another quick game that we didn't bother finishing. The idea was trying to convince a paranoid friend you are in a time loop but he keeps changing his tell me this if you are ever in a time loop password.

The game mechanic is to work out how he is picking the password.

Here... let me show it off.

The idea is two transgender scientists in love who invent a form of time travel to go back to their younger bodies so they can transition sooner and spend more of their lives together.

The problem is the formulas were off and your character keeps waking up on the day that they started the loop on. What's worse is (after a hefty plane ride to confirm it) your partner does not recognize you. They're just a kid.

So you have to pass on your knowledge of time travel to this young person who does not yet know you and convince them to spend decades working on the fix. The good news is they are obsessed with time loops and time travel (hence dedicating their life to inventing it)

The game was going to be a puzzle based on all of the little secret rules the character Parker has spent too much time obsessing on while managing how frustrated your character is getting travelling 3-5 hours every day to have and fail this conversation.

The big themes of the game are tied up in the fact that there is no magic words you can say to make someone be part of your life again after losing them.

Here are some screenshots of the coding that we had for it:

Anyway. It is a cute little concept. I truly believe we would get success if we fleshed it out but we've no drive to do big projects on our own.

Wynn had typed this last bit a couple hours ago before we got pulled away while working on the video:

Wondering if I can pick up editing. Video, audio, writing. Any kind of editing. It would benefit Dawn's exhibitionist streak or Cammie's rough but spirited prose.

Perhaps a thing to YouTube and look into later.

[felassan]

A few more snippets of interest and insight from Mark Darrah, from an older Mark Darrah on Games YouTube video where he was livestreaming playing Dragon Age: Origins some months ago -

"Solving the endings of Mass Effect 3 [for the Next Mass Effect], I don't know, I don't know what you do. I mean, looks like from the trailers to me like maybe they've moved it pretty far into the future, so, that would let you kind've collapse the probability spaces maybe, I don't know, it is a problem for sure".

"I'm curious to see what the Mass Effect TV adaptation ends up looking like because they've taken a crack at it a couple of times". [note this video was streamed ~1 year ago]

[source]

He also talked more generally about DA:O and the franchise and things in general. These bits are collected under a cut due to length -

"I don't remember how long the pre-Fade part of the Mage Tower is, all I remember is that Luke filled it up with stuff"

The Deep Roads in DA:O "probably could have been half as long as they are"

There are so many interactables in the Mage Tower in DA:O, "probably a bit much"

"I have one memory expansion mod installed to make it a bit more stable. The reason it crashes and is so unstable on modern computers is because you crank up the fidelity which makes it use more memory, and it's a 33-bit executable and it literally can't use more than 2 gig of memory and then it explodes. So yeah there are a couple different patches that let it use more memory, that definitely improve the stability"

Early in the Broken Circle quest, you can talk to a blood mage that you've just fought while she lies on the floor, and she asks you not to kill her. At this point in the quest, Mark said "Yeah, I feel like this bit, in a modern BioWare game would've been a little bit more circumspect. They wouldn't have been labelled 'Blood Mage' and maybe there would have been a conversation before the fight"

Chat asked "What do you think about canon endings in games like DA or ME?" Mark replied, "I mean you need to have canon endings. My feeling on canon, I don't really like what we did with some of the comics and that for DA where they just assumed things about Alistair. DA:O in particular, well ME3 is the worst, DA:O of the DAs is the most divergent, so if you wanna reuse some of these characters you kind've have to decide what canon is for those. The games have tried to respect peoples' choices. The comics and that have been a lot less good than that because I think the writers wanted to use Alistair, Wynne, Isabela or whatever. So you kinda have to treat those as if they are, y'know, multiverse a little bit if your canon is divergent. I don't love that but DA:O in particular is so divergent that to use the characters at all we had to do something. I kind've feel like maybe we should've just not used the characters but I wasn't the one driving the narrative on the comics"

[in the Mage Tower in Broken Circle] chat asked "So what exactly are those darkspawn flesh sack things on the wall?" Mark replied, "Blight corruption. I guess, demon pods.. unclear. Just something to differentiate it from Mage Origin I think, to be truthful"

DA:O is a little "confused in terms of magical sources and what goes with what. The team started to disentangle some of the magic sources since DA:O. It's a bit confused here, like is all magic from the Fade? Then what about blood magic, what about the Blight, what about lyrium? And so it's been sort've a [effort to reduce these a bit]"

Because the PC can be a healer, solo fights like against Duncan in the Fade in DA:O had to be balanced super-easy

(pls note that in places there is a bit of paraphrasing of the info, the best source is always the primary source with full quotes in their original context)

[source]

[sagesariadnd]

Please Watch March on Faewunder. I Just Think It's Neat.

I'm waiting on a few things before I start posting pictures like I promised, so in the meantime, I have a recommendation if you're looking for a D&D actual play show that isn't one of the Big Three.

I've fairly recently started dipping my toes into the World of Io, a collection of streamed short campaigns set in the DM's homebrew world of, well, Io. I started with, and am still in the middle of, March on Faewunder. I started it because my current parasocial squish Tom Fawkes is in it, and I'm sticking with it for some of the most wholesome and funny roleplay I've ever seen. A warning now that the following is an unhinged infodump about how much I love this campaign, but I promise a link is at the bottom!

Highlights include:

Actually streaming session zero! I don't know if other shows have done this, but it's the first time I've seen it and found it really cool to see the process in action. This includes an introduction to Io's history and world makeup and answering the players' questions about it, so it's great for onboarding new viewers because they don't have to have watched the other campaigns. Plus, hearing the players talk about the kind of characters they were making made me immediately excited for the campaign and the dynamics within the party, which was clearly the case for the people watching too because there was fanart literally that night.

Mark Hulmes - the host of High Rollers...you know, that actual play show that did the one-shot with the Baldur's Gate 3 cast last year - playing a half-lagomon paladin with the energy of DiC dub Sailor Moon. Yeah that's right, a grown-ass man is shamelessly playing his ideal bunny girl waifu and nobody judges him for it because Gloria is a precious cinnamon roll and must be cherished.

A southern belle dhampir ranger named Vidalia whose parasol is both a sword and a gun...crossbow...thing. Also she's a swarmkeeper ranger and her swarm is birds! Used to be corvids, now I think it's hawks. And she's the sweetest damn person you'll ever meet and doesn't even hide that she's a vampire.

An elf bard named Pandora who got her name literally because her player thought it was fun to say in her character voice, and she says it to herself in character when she's anxious. She's also a vampire hunter who's afraid of birds.

Disclaimer: Pandora is an emotional wreck of a character with a heart of gold and she WILL make you cry at least every other session.

Did I mention those three are totally in an awkward disaster lesbian cuddle puddle? Cause they totally are. Vidalia even calls Gloria 'hunny bun' and it's the most adorable thing in the world.

Hey, you wanna have lots of emotions about skeletons? Well Tom has you covered with Ribeye, the skeleton bard who wants to be a chef! (Gee, DM, how come your mom lets your campaign have TWO bards?) Don't be fooled by his punny name or his Ed Wynn voice, this skeleton will fuck you up emotionally almost as much as Pandora. This youtube funnyman has made his fellow players wail loudly into the microphone like Rocky freaking Lockridge.

And you wanna know why there's so many emotions about skeletons? Well for one thing Tom's just really good at roleplaying but the big catalyst is that neither Ribeye in character, nor any of the players out of character, know Ribeye's HP. The DM just tells him if he gets knocked out. The DM rolls his hit dice for him. And he can't be healed by normal healing magic, only necromancy. Yeah uh...nobody in the party can cast necromancy. They found a backup, but it's VERY temporary and the DM plays the game HARD. Your butt WILL clench every single time Ribeye takes damage. The party's butts sure do. No really, it's genuinely sweet how hard they all work to protect their skelebro.

I feel bad that I don't have a lot to say comparatively about the last member, the changeling monk Kagami. I think he's just along for the ride. But he's there, and he's as badass as a monk should be, and he's the source of a good few funny moments, including the ever optimistic statement "I haven't exploded yet!" (no you don't get context, watch the show) and the pure D&D energy of spending all your money on a stupid carnival prize because it's so ridiculous you just HAVE to have it. It even comes in handy, how the heck did that happen???

If you like crafting, Faewunder has you covered with all sorts of fun homebrewing! Every long rest is an adventure! Ribeye whips up all sorts of fun dishes and names them! Kagami supes up everyone's weapons and armor! Pandora desperately tries to keep up the supply of potions Ribeye can drink! The DM has a chart of all sorts of fun buffs they can unlock and put on their gear, so long as there's time to make it. It takes up a decent chunk of the sessions, but the party makes it work through...

Camp RP! Banter and sharing feelings around the campfire almost every long rest, including the ones that come from just travel time with nothing happening! I've never seen a party so willing to share their feelings with each other and they're so delightfully close, even if Kagami's still keeping things close to his scarily muscular chest at the moment.

Intense combat with some of the wildest luck (or usually lack thereof) I've ever seen on a VTT. I thought it was roll20 that hated us, who kicked Foundary's dog???

Crazy fae shit

Fucked up trees! Every DM needs to have at least one fucked up tree encounter.

Fun with voice modulators!

Distinct and lovable NPCs!

A disclaimer that the NPCs will never flirt with the PCs unless the PCs initiate. That's just a good rule of thumb to have in a DM-player dynamic! I mean, check that the DM is comfortable with it too, but really I'm just sad that 'not sicing a horny NPC on my players' is noteworthy.

A channel in the Io discord exclusively for rules lawyering, so the DM can receive feedback on goofed up rules (or ignore the ones from people who forget his houserules) without them cluttering up the twitch chat or distracting him from running the game! Now THAT'S innovation, y'all!

Fanart every night, and bingo cards that the DM fills out with the chat!

The DM is a racoon wizard! Seriously, how can you say no to that?!

Anyway it's really good, and if any of this sounds appealing the playlist is below. It's a relatively short campaign - 13 sessions averaging around three hours apiece. I'll definitely be checking out the rest of the Io campaigns after I finish Faewunder, but I feel like it's gonna be hard to top this group.

[sansloii]

@soulsxng | send me a number

2. Drabbles

i love drabbles! i love them! i wish i still had the mental energy to shit those out whenever i wanted because it's always a nice little writing exercise to get a thought or a scene you can't get out of your head written down. even if you don't necessarily put it on tumblr, you can just... write it and save it somewhere to read again later ( if you don't absolutely hate your past writing, that is ).

similarly, i like reading drabbles from others too. i'm not going to say i read every single one that crosses my dash but like... i try to! sometimes i skim, read a second time to let it soak in, and then go "that was nice" before liking it and moving on. other times, i read it 6 times, like it, and appear in dms frothing at the mouth about it. it really depends on where my brain is at that day.

5. Dash commentary

again, this another "i wish i had the bandwidth for this" because i love dash commentary. it's always so silly and fun to participate in it and i can't say that i've ever had a bad experience with it. my dash doesn't move particularly fast either so now, i can usually keep up. however, being on the dash for too long is a bit draining so after maybe an hour or so, i kinda fizzle out and go off to do other things or watch youtube videos ehjfwsfs--

25. Your muse(s)

i feel like you sent this with the express purpose of getting me to gush about my muses and i will happily take the bait. they are my babies and i love them so very very much--mikah in particular, because i've had them the longest as far as the existence of this blog.

you cannot imagine the amount of times that i've thought that maybe mikah or the others are too edgy, maybe they're too rude, too mean, too unrealistic, or that i'm just... following some trend because i saw one morally questionable muse and fixated on that. maybe that's all correct. maybe it's not. i don't know.

however, i'm enjoying myself right now. i'm having fun and that is, by far, more important to me. mikah, penny, wynn, evan, dakota, and joseph are always in a constant state of development and i will add or take away things as i so choose. sometimes something i thought of 2017 for mikah isn't something i want to keep in 2023. sometimes an idea i had for dakota way back when doesn't really fit how i envision her now. both of those things are okay and it's okay for me to change those things if i feel like... it'll make me more comfortable and more secure in myself when it comes to writing my babies. i never want to be in a place where i don't feel like i can do my ocs justice, much less because i think i can't change anything about them. Better yet, because i've already said certain things about them that i look back on now and go "...no that's not right."

i guess what i'm trying to get at is... it's a process--a process i had to force myself to be okay with in some regard. mikah was not perfect when i made them and neither were the others...but that's fine. they're mine so i'm just gonna keep chucking them at the wall and seeing where they stick. if they just slide off and fall in some garbage fire, that's fine. i can just pick em back up and throw them again... with love

[impossiblyizzy]

1, 22, 49 back at you! Plus a bonus: 18

Thanks Fee!

1) How old were you when you first starting writing fanfiction?

About 4. I used to make up little stories when I was a kid and my mum transcribed a few of them - some of them are about OCs but characters also include Thomas the Tank Engine and the cast of the Rainbow Magic books. Also myself lol. I think I steered towards origional characters for a lot of my childhood, but my fanfiction.net account is stilll up with my Diana Wynne Jones fanfics from when I was about 12!

18) Do you have any abandoned WIPs? What made you abandon them?

I have a folder in my google drive called Story Graveyard which currently contains about 50 abandoned fanfics - although some of them are a decade old at this point. Highlights include a Hamlet modern au, three different attempts at an ace!Jake fic, and a Peraltiago fake dating story. I used to feel bad about that when I was younger because I thought I just couldn't stick with anything, but now I know that it's just part of my process. I have a lot of ideas and not all of them can end up as finished fics!

22) Do you have a story that you look back on and cringe when you reread it?

Oh, all of them. Except my self-insert Thomas the Tank Engine story, that slaps.

49) Can you remember the first fic you read? What was it about?

I'm pretty sure my first experience of consuming fanfic was stumbling across some videos on youtube when I was about 8 that were like... videos of Harry Potter fanfic. The text would come up one line at a time and it would use a screenshot from the movies for whichever character was speaking. It was pretty weird!

ask me fanfic questions :)

[notebooks-and-laptops]

Dragon Age Origins Mod Recs

Hey! So I thought since I’ve now modded all three games pretty successfully, I thought I’d drop my fav mods for my followers, starting with Origins. All are from Nexus Mods. I’ve marked the ones I deem ‘essential’ as **. 

Character creation Mods + Outfits

More Hairstyles - exactly what it says on the tin, this mod adds more hairstyles into the game for you to customise your warden with

Pineapples Vibrant Colours - This adds extra eye, hair and skin colours to the character creator

**Grey Wardens of Ferelden - This mod is just completely essential for my playthroughs. It makes all grey wardens wear the warden armour seen in da2 and dai (Duncan, Alistair etc.), and adds grey warden armour to your inventory once you participate in the joining. It does the same for the Grey Wardens in awakening. I love the design of these outfits, and I hated that they weren’t present in DAO

**Neutral Female Armour - sick of the weird boobs on all the armor when placed on Wynne, Leliana, Morrigan and female warden? This mod gets rid of them and makes everyone look so much more natural/battle ready.

Gameplay Mods

**Improved Atmosphere - this mod changes...a hell of a lot. It’s amazing, and really adds life to the game, particularly at camp where it shows your companions actually moving around and doing their own things, rather than just stood stock still. Be careful though, it has a lot of incompatibilities. There’s a few YouTube videos that go over how to make it the most compatible with other mods, but you won’t get the full IA experience, so do what works for you. Here’s the YT video I used

**Zevran ASAP - exactly what it says on the tin, you get Zevran around Lothering instead of having to do a main recruitment quest first. I always struggle to pick which recruitment quest I’m going to do without him, to get him, and with this I don’t have to make that choice.

Skip Fight - I love the fighting in DA2 and DAI, but Origins fighting just feels very clunky and unfun for me. As such, it’s nice to have this mod for when I get sick of fights. This mod adds in an extra ability which - when triggered - kills all the enemies you’re currently fighting. The fact that it’s optional is great, because it means that when you fancy doing the fight scenes you can, and when you’re in a rush you can skip them

Skip The Fade - yeah so...the fade isn’t for everyone. This mod allows you to still see your companions nightmares, but skip all the puzzle bits. For replays, this mod can be really useful. 

Extra Cutscenes

**The Rescue at Ishal - adds an extra cut scene of you being rescued by Flemith from the tower at Ostagar after you light the beacon. If you’re an Alistair Romancer this one is particularly great as it shows Alistair dragging himself through his own blood to get to you and then cupping your dying face in his hand to see if he can wake you

Sleep Until Dawn - adds a repeatable cutscene where you cuddle with your LI at camp. When you wake up, the camp is in morning light, rather than it’s regular nighttime light. Won’t work until the romance is locked in.

I’m a hoe for Alistair Section

Alistair Romance Evesdropping - adds a bench at camp where you can get some extra cutscenes where you overhear your companions talking about yours and Alistair's romance.

[tomatograter]

Oh my god I just realised Jake was actually thinking of Dirk when kissing the poster.

Also, this may be a stupid question but,

I really enjoy reading what you write and I wonder how you talk like you do. Like, how did you expand your vocabulary and learn to analyse character and such? I honestly don’t know how to explain which is a bit ironic.

I just really enjoy consuming your content :)

THANKS!!!! and yeah he was.

I don't know how to really explain this one since since anything tangentially related to storytelling is pretty much... an interest I have? I tend to read author dissertations/essays/speeches and listen to a lot of lectures on writing and literature when I'm working, for the fun of it. I also tend to do this with comics & movies I just go prodding around for theory depending on the piece :/

Though if I were to cite my biggest inspirations rn in terms of prose and lyricism in narrative, it's definitely a grain of sand next to: Terry Pratchett, Ursula K. Le Guin, Seth Dickinson, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Daniel Kraus, Diana Wynne Jones, Machado de Assis, and with special mention to William Goldman's 'The Princess Bride'.

(I read Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games growing up and I think these books still hold up re; a post-myth gamefied dystopian narrative on deeply traumatized children, if you're interested. I reread them last year-ish. The movies are NOOOOOT good. I also obligatorily have to note I went through the entirety of A Song of Ice and Fire by G.R.R Martin age 14 and while its not a series I particularly... recommend on account of how meandering and overlong all that grimdark bullshit can get on top of the eye-rolling shock value improv that screwed over an entire television age, it does inform my general lexicon on bullshit overlong epics. If you're blissfully unaware and looking into these please be warned of everything you could possibly be warned of being present in these books. Do not believe fluff reviews. The female characters are basically treated like garbage on a 1:10 ratio. Just read the authors above!)

I browse a lot of books on the topic whenever one catches my interest, and if that's what you're looking for id recommend Monkeys With Typewriters by scarlett thomas & Steering the Craft by ursula k le guin. There might be better ones out there but I like reasoning next to theory not just the thing by itself. Reading a lot of authors and mixing up short stories with long ones over the past years has definitely changed how I think about story structure over time, so I can't understate the importance of just... finding what you like to read and going out of your way to try other things sometimes.

Brandon Sanderson has been trying to bring some of his creative writing lectures at BYU to the general public through youtube, and while these focus on traditional publishing (meaning fantasy and sci-fi books and their production pipeline in a professional setting) he has a lot of fun insights from being a long time author of BEHEMOTH sized books. It's very educational. If you're not interested in all of the videos, I can very much recommend the single 40min lecture on Short Stories (With guest instructor Mary Robinette Kowal) as an awesome breakdown of story structure, where to begin plotting, pulling apart/milking your ideas and executing them in an engaging timeframe, which works for short AND long stories. I hope at least one of these connections can serve as some help!

[xcziel]

get to know me

tagged by @vishcount (thank you!!) and i'll follow her format bc making two posts seems a little much - i'm not that interesting!!

(hilariously, this post shows up as blocked for me bc of the tag 'joker' which? tumblr?????)

Part I

name: i'm an internet old, so i never use my real name online, mainly because it's spelled in a very unique way (thanks mom & dad) - i mean like, if you googled it you could find my home address in a few seconds kind of unique - but also, though i do enjoy the spelling, i actually don't like it very much when it's said out loud? (is it weird that my name written down is 'me', but my name aloud has never felt like 'me'?) always wanted a nickname but never acquired one :/

at any rate, i've had the username xcziel forever and i go by that 😊 (pronounced ex-SEE-zee-el, similar to etc. or ex-SET-er-ah! thanks @xia-xueyi for pointing out that it can be confusing to guess!)

rest behind a cut because it got long!

pronouns: she/her

star sign: i don't ... really *do* astrology? but technically saggitarius

height: 5'4" (162.5cm for the intl folks)

time: 5:43pm but these thing take me forever to type out so ... ???

birthday: playing the 'internet old' card again .. but it floats around american Thanksgiving depending on the year

nationality: american

fave bands/groups/solo artists: lumping these together because i just .. don't really do music much anymore. if you had asked me this back in my 20s i'm sure i would have had all kinds of opinions and things to share, but these days i actually mostly prefer to listen music from when i was a kid. part of it is also that as an old, i prefer to buy my music, even digitally, and i don't really use spotify - which does so much to enable diverse music exploration i admit! but i mostly have earplugs in all the time and music does not work for me as background noise, so...

so i guess my answer would be 70s disco and classic rock and 80s new wave artists? i've never liked any artist's entire discography and prefer greatest hits-type compilations, but i guess duran duran and def leppard and depeche mode would be considered formative? i love new order but specifically late 80s new order, NOT joy division. the only concert t-shirt i've ever worn was the cult? i loved sonic temple but i can't listen to most of it anymore though i still adore love removal machine. i think maybe if you get old enough, for some of us there's TOO MUCH good music and we can't pare it down anymore

song stuck in your head: jamiroquai's canned heat

last movie you watched: re: the above, i re-watched center stage, the 2000 one with zoe saldana and the mandy moore soundtrack, bc it's a happy comfort movie and i just got a digital version

last show you binged: i can't really "binge" very often bc after a couple of hours i need a break, so i guess i'd say the tgcf donghua on netflix since it was short enough to get through all in one go

when you created your blog: in 2012 i stopped lurking so i could post about the avengers movie

the last thing you googled: 5'4" in cm? lol before that it was chinese wrapped street food

other blogs: everything is here! i discovered i compartmentalize about as well as i tag reliably (😓) but i do have several automated ao3feed-tag style sideblogs. and i did, very briefly, have a *winces* hockey sideblog too

why i chose my url: ooh i know i've done this before, sorry if it's repetitive, basically it was the username i picked back when my family first got aol: short, unique combo of letters - 14-year-old me really thought about it! and then it wouldn't let me use anything other than my name. thirty-some-odd years later, trying to come up with a livejournal username that wasn't already taken and getting fed up, i plugged it in and went: good enough!

how many people are you following: like 760-something last i checked? although many, many, many of them are deactivated

how many followers do you have: idk i don't like looking at that stuff, but way fewer than i am following

average hours of sleep: it varies too much day by day, my sleep schedule is too wonky, i have no idea what the average would be

lucky numbers: 7? cliché i know, and again not really buying into it, but somewhere in my hindbrain i like it that my first, middle, and last names all have seven letters

instruments: none. i like singing

what i'm currently wearing: giant black t-shirt and baggy black drawstring shorts, standard sitting around the house gear

dream job: don't have one. if i did it would give me something to be working towards *sigh* this is how you end up in retail for decades, kids! but also, to quote a random post i saw in true tumblr fashion "i simply do not dream of labor"

dream trip: covered this one before but: back to the uk and some railway daytrips, or a really fancy northern cruise, atlantic/pacific either one

fave food: uhhh, don't really have a favorite but i'm almost always in the mood for pizza

top three fictional universe you'd like to live in: none really, if i had to still be me..maybe some kind of actually utopian future? but the pandemic has confirmed for me that i do NOT like living in interesting times, so most fictional story universes are RIGHT out. my favorites to read about like discworld or diana wynne jones' worlds would be way to chaotic for my comfort. possibly diane duane's young wizards universe would be safe enough to be okay?

Part II

last song: watching center stage made me think of my dance playlist so sunrise by simply red

last movielast stream: i don't watch streams or youtube often, so it was the same as you, vish! liu chang's birthday stream was SO enjoyable i screenrecorded the entire thing just so i could play it back (and maybe gif sometime if i ever get the drive to actually do it)

currently reading: well i just finished the translated quan qiu gao kao or global university entrance exam novel, which was sparked purely from catching a single rec post here on tumblr and basically just *falling* into this 166 chapter epic that is *amazing* and not coming up for air until i got to the end, which is typical novel-reading behavior for me (yes i was the kid who read through lunch period and got hassled by people who kept pestering me with "what're you reading" questions and yes i realize probably a lot of you on tumblr were too) plus, the new murderbot novel is out tomorrow!!!!! so that'll be where i end up next!

currently watching: the entire dmbj verse (that i can get my hands on) but ... sporadically and stopping at random different parts because the thing is ... this type of show is not really the kind i enjoy so much? so since it's more for "research" and learning character arcs (and let's be honest: shots of liu sang), etc. it's easy to get distracted by other stuff. i'm also watching the sleuth of the ming dynasty, mr queen, bromance, the expanse, re-watching farscape and stargate sg-1, just finished the falcon and the winter soldier, and then anytime something new and short gets introduced it jumps the queue. there are just. so. many. things. to. watch! (now i have to look into anti-fraud league too!? you all are cruel ...)

what is antipoetry to you: i ... don't really think much about poetry? i know what i prefer is usually the more basic rhymed kind like lewis carroll, emily dickinson, poe, coleridge, etc. so i suppose i don't have much use for classifying non-rhyming verse? i can appreciate stuff like rupi kaur which i guess would qualify? or that william carlos williams plums poem? but it doesn't really stick with me the way lyric-like verse does

currently craving: i never know what exactly this is meant to be in reference to ... hmmm, i would love a new high-concept, high production-quality movie like say, pacific rim, to be released, just for that massive, excited energy that comes with something new that hasn't already got tons of disappointing or conflicting history behind it - that would be so fun!!

other than that, right now, i mostly kinda want some fried fish? but that will have to wait until i go to get my second vaccine shot on wednesday since it's on the way there. i'd also like my internal body parts to settle down and fly right but it's been more than a month and they don't seem inclined :(((( maybe once i'm fully vaxxed i'll think about consulting somebody about it

tagging @foxofninetales @xia-xueyi @momosandlemonsoda @memorydragon @thewindsofsong @elvencantation @mylastbraincql @hesayshesgotboyfriend @aurawolfgirl2000 @smaragdine-galaxy and anyone who wants to! but never feel obligated and if you don't get around to it for like half a year that's totally fine, i am still interested!!!

[doctorhelena]

I was tagged by @katherinecooke, with whom I do have a lot in common, and some things not so much! :)

Dogs or cats? Dogs. I’m allergic to cats, but also I have to admit that I just like dogs better (although I would have nothing against cats if they didn’t make me so itchy and sneezy).

YouTube celebrities or normal celebrities? I don’t really follow either (I generally get my celebrity news by osmosis through people I follow on social media) but I am not sure I could actually name a YouTube celebrity, so I guess normal?

If you could choose to live anywhere, where would it be? Ideally, I’d like to live in a whole bunch of wildly different places around the world, for like, a year or two at a time. But, I do also really like where I live now (aside from the massive earthquake that’s supposed to arrive at some point, which I would prefer, in my ideal world, not to have looming).

Disney or Dreamworks? If I have to choose, Disney.

Favourite childhood TV show? I actually didn’t watch a lot of TV as a kid. There’s a big gap between Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood and my teenage obsession with Star Trek: The Next Generation. Although, now that I think of it, my sister and I were pretty into Square One TV, particularly their “Mathnet” segment. We may possibly have written Mathnet proto-fanfic?

The movie you’re looking forward to in 2020? Wonder Woman 1984, and Black Widow. (And maybe the live action Mulan? I’m not sure about that one, but I do really like the animated version.)

Favourite book you read in 2019? I - don’t know? I think I have quarantine brain. I wish the library would keep a record of books I’ve checked out so I could jog my memory of what I read last year!

Marvel or DC? Marvel, although there are definitely DC things I like too.

If you chose Marvel, favourite member of the X-Men? I think I saw one of the X-Men movies, a long time ago? Okay, either Professor Xavier because I love Patrick Stewart, or Wolverine because he’s Canadian. 😛 

Night or day? I like both, but I’m definitely a night person.

Favorite Pokémon? Pikachu? (who is also the only one whose name I know...)

Top 5 bands/artists? Gah, I’m so bad at picking favourites. Off the top of my head, five bands/artists I feel like listening to right now: Leonard Cohen, The Be Good Tanyas, The Barenaked Ladies, Liz Phair, Sarah McLachlan.

Top 10 books? I'm taking the pressure off myself and, rather than trying to figure out my top 10, I’m just listing the first 10 books I really like that come to mind (and cheating with series :)

The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Oxford Time Travel series by Connie Willis

The Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy Sayers

Caravan by Dorothy Gilman (and her Mrs. Pollifax series)

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Top 4 movies? Four I could watch over and over again are A League of Their Own, Galaxy Quest, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Love, Actually

US or Europe? I don’t live in either!

Tumblr or Twitter? Tumblr

Favourite vacation destination? I want to go everywhere! But I do really love the week every summer my kids and I usually spend unplugged at Mom and Kids camp.

Favourite YouTuber? Whoever it was that put up all those episodes of The Crocodile Hunter my kids have been devouring this month? ;) (yeah, I know that’s not the intent of the question)

Favourite author? I love so many for different reasons. I don’t know how on earth I would pick just one.

Tea or coffee?  Tea. I like the smell of coffee, but I’ve never learned to like the taste (although, I can usually manage to choke it down if it’s an Irish Coffee. ;)

OTP? Currently, Peggy Carter / Steve Rogers. But I have a List. :)

Do you play an instrument or sing? I can sort of play the piano - I took organ lessons as a kid, and have improved my piano skills since my own kids started taking lessons and I started piggybacking along. :) I played the clarinet for 7 years in school, and occasionally I dig it out (I can still play it, but I have next to no embouchure endurance). I also play the guitar, although I mostly just finger-pick chords to sing along to (but I can play a few other things like Blackbird by the Beatles). And finally, I sing alto in an early music chamber choir (although, not right now!)

Tagging @teaandatale, @thesokovianaccords, @invidiosa, @buckywiththegoodhair86, @fanfic-bookworm, and @rixdottir

[unless-we-choose-to-reverse-it]

Re: Contrapoints.

So Natalie Wynn, AKA Contrapoints, recently deleted her Twitter. And I’m going to state, up front, that if you are celebrating this fact, you are the problem. Inb4 y’all cancel my ass about this.

And to give the TL;DR up front: this is a post about what “cancel culture” actually looks like. Actual violent abusers being named and shamed is not cancel culture. Sex pests and people who are genuinely fucking hateful being accurately described as such? Not cancel culture. That’s a thing called “I don’t want to associate with these bastards, and I want other people to know that they are bastards.”

But let’s talk about what actual cancel culture looks like. I’m going to put the rest of this under a “read more” so that I don’t put an entire goddamn essay on everyone’s feed.

For those who do not know, Natalie Wynn operates the YouTube channel Contrapoints, focused on discussing leftist politics with a particular focus on gender and sex. Natalie, being a trans woman, has a level of insider knowledge that a lot of performatively woke people online lack, and her work, true to her nom de plume, often deals with the fact that these are complicated issues.

She has a considerable following, and a good deal of her following consists of men who she has essentially saved from becoming alt-right shitlords. Her production values, knack for performance, and willingness to recognize complex issues when she sees them has a certain power with people who are not already involved in leftist circles, and while many of her takes are fairly pedestrian by the standards of people DEEP into left-leaning circles, she is one of the avenues for bringing people into leftist politics from outside. Go onto any one of her most popular videos, and you’ll see the comments filled with people talking about how Natalie made them change their minds. It’s a beautiful kind of thing.

Now, am I loading the conversation a bit because I am a fan of Contrapoints? Yes. Yes I am. Because I believe that her work is valuable to modern leftism. She is a propagandist, and what’s more, she’s a brilliant propagandist. Where so many people attempt to bring people into leftism through shame, she entertains and entices, and presents a force that reactionary shitbags seem incapable of attacking.

But where reactionaries find themselves wanting, the Puritans have plenty of ammo to destroy progressive spaces from within.

Fast forward to a few days ago. Natalie Wynn posts a tweet talking about asking for pronouns. Now, because she deleted her Twitter and I don’t have the tweet in front of me, I cannot quote it verbatim, but to paraphrase, she said that asking for people’s pronouns isn’t always the best idea, since it can make binary trans people feel like they’re being isolated and viewed as “less than” their gender.

Okay, have we read that? Good. Let’s consider that for a second.

This is a genuinely good point to make, and it mostly arose from her own feelings of discomfort re: being a trans woman and finding trans-inclusive spaces uncomfortable on that account. Perhaps the point was not elegantly made, but still.

Non-binary trans folk, binary trans folk who can “pass,” and binary trans folk who cannot; they all have different needs. For some people, asking about pronouns is an affirming thing, something which allows them to articulate themselves fully and prevents them from dealing with people misgendering them. For others, especially those who are interested in a more classically gendered expression, asking about pronouns can feel like misgendering, can feel like people regard you as less than your actual self.

This is a discussion that needs to be had. How can the community balance different needs from very closely linked groups of people? How can we reconcile the needs of people who are openly defiant of gender norms and who want their opposition to that recognized, with the needs of people who are more comfortable with traditionally gendered expression and who want to be recognized as such?

It’s a conversation that needs to be had. Unfortunately, subtlety is dead on Twitter dot com. And on social media in general.

When I talk about “Puritans,” I refer to a specific subset of Extremely Online progressives. Just as the IRL Puritans seemed to disdain any kind of Christian teachings of love, community, and acceptance in favour of control, guilt, and hating thy neighbour, the “Puritans” seem to derive their politics solely from a sense of guilt and control, and relish in attacking those who are not Woker Than Thou.

The average Online Puritan is far more concerned with cancelling other progressives than they are with opposing evil in this world. Opposing reactionaries? Nah, that might actually do something. Let’s just attack other progressives, and then wonder why people don’t seem eager to support our causes. Opposing people who are actually making the lives of LGBT people worse in tangible ways? Pfft, that would take work. Hey, let’s nitpick every form of art that displays anything remotely shitty, because clearly, depicting shitty things in art or consuming art with dark themes means that you actually want to do those things in the real world. Hey, let’s all dogpile this queer creator who is trying to convert alt-right shitlords to the good side of history! Surely, that’ll advance our cause!

Hell, I think there’s something to that comparison, because at the heart of both groups is the idea of the Elect and the Reprobates. An unfortunate aspect of modern western culture is that we tend to believe that people are good or evil at heart. This is a really dumb idea. Good and evil are not things that we are; they’re things that we do. We perform good acts and evil acts upon this world, and when I say “we,” I mean all of us. Sometimes, I see people who otherwise do really good things for the world do something really stupid. Sometimes, otherwise monstrous people do good stuff.

But if we believe that some are Elect and others are Reprobates, then that paradigm is impossible. The Elect cannot sin, and since it is a sin to not believe yourself one of the Elect, then you must enforce this law upon all others. If they sin, they are a Reprobate. Alternatively, you must work hard to explain why what they just did wasn’t actually a sin, so they’re still good, actually!

This, right here, is cancel culture. It isn’t accurately calling out people who have done legitimately evil things. It isn’t attempting to get predatory people out of the community. It’s this dichotomy between the Elect and the Reprobates, and the need to constantly enforce that We Are The Elect and that All Who Do Not Match Up Are Reprobates. No willingness to admit the recovering shitheads who might not fully grasp the issue without some help. No consideration that people who do minor stupid things might just need gentle correction to set them on the righteous path. Nope, none of that. Any sin makes you a Reprobate, and Reprobates Must Be Purged.

I should stop beating around the bush. The Online Puritans descended, because apparently, “we should consider how this makes people feel” means, “asking for a person’s pronouns is personally attacking me.” In other words, Natalie was now a Reprobate.

What followed was Natalie clarifying her point and even attempting to throw her critics a bone, suggesting that she wasn’t as considerate as she needed to be about the ways that non-binary people would interpret her words. The response was unchanging. Other leftists came to her defense, but they were, of course, Cancelled as well, as I am sure to be the second that people discover this post. Eventually, Natalie deleted her Twitter, and the Online Puritans rejoiced at another Reprobate driven off of Twitter like it was any real victory. 

Now, this is not the death of Contrapoints. She still has her channel, and a shitload of people who will continue to watch her content, like me. But a woman who, in my personal opinion, is a force for good in this shithole we call the internet, was essentially driven off of a social media platform because the Puritans decided that she was a Reprobate.

And to anyone who wants to declare me a Reprobate for making this post: go the fuck ahead. I am not perfect, and I am certainly not one of the Elect; hell, I’m no Calvinist, so I don’t even regard those as valid categories. And furthermore: you, the Elect, are as great a danger to progressive spaces as the reactionaries, because you force us to fight on two fronts. You force us to oppose each other, as opposed to standing together for the betterment of the world. And for fucks sake, is it too much to ask that the people who are getting fucked over the most by the current order should stand together in opposition to it?

So fuck it. I stand with Contrapoints. Puritans are cancelled.

[felassan]

Hello, I know you're a really good loremaster, one of the best, so what's the most fitting class if I wanted to roleplay a character as a Chantry Priest? I wanted to import my character from another RPG where they were a healer priest of a monastery but can't make them a Mage in DA because it seems like the nature of metaphysics of the universe conflicts with their character So is a templar-spec nomad in light robed gear or a Rogue like Leliana/Seb more fitting for a Priest? Which is closer? ty!

Hi Nonnie, awsh thanku, that’s v kind of you to say. :) here’s some thoughts for your consideration. cut for length.

in terms of the frames of how classes and class-tropes are in some other similar (fantasy, sword n sorcery, etc) settings, spirit healer mages in DA remind me of classical clerics and the white mage archtype. here’s (spoilers for Tevinter Nights and Blue Wraith at link) a recent post about what we know about how healing magic works in the DA setting, just in case it’s of any interest/use to you.

in terms of mundane healing and non-magical medicine references in the DA settings, the lore has references to “healers”, “surgeons”, “medics”, and “physicians”. there are also midwives, apothecaries, herbalists and alchemists, although it’s unclear if one has to be a mage to brew a straight-up potion-potion. here’s what the DA wiki has to say about medicine/healing arts in Thedas, both magical and mundane. you might be particularly interested in the following:

the only access to any sort of proper care that common people would have is through the Chantry, or one of the Circles of Magi. The visitation of a Circle-approved mage practitioner must be arranged through a Templar. The local chantry provides care for the sick, and members of the clergy may travel to troubled areas in order to provide free relief in the name of charity.

as it pertains to having Chantry clergypeople healing and providing medical care to the sick.

the templars strike me as paladin-esque. what they really do as an Order isn’t really the same, but the basal archtype is there. they are essentially this’s setting’s holy warriors, the crusaders. bear in mind that if you make your character a templar or someone who has the abilities of a templar, they are essentially taking on an addiction to the substance lyrium, which becomes a serious problem for people in the latter stages/grips of the addiction. lyrium withdrawal is unpleasant and comes with significant cravings. over time, users lose their memories and their minds, become paranoid and obsessive, exhibiting dementia-like symptoms, etc. templars in the Order are sworn to protect the world from the dangers of magic, but their primary duties on average usually boil down to acting as jailers to the mages kept in Circles, hunting down escapees, and ‘bringing in’ mages who came into their power outside of the Circle, although there are ofc other duties like guarding Chantries or being the bodyguards of the Divine. mentioning this stuff because it would naturally have an impact on how you play your character. perhaps not the Templar Order stuff if you make someone with templar abilities who isn’t in the Order (see below), but the lyrium stuff definitely. note it is possible to wean off and stop taking lyrium, Cullen can do this according to PC choices in DAI.

there are examples of non-heavy templar armor in the games, like Templar Armor - Light Issue (a medium chestpiece). DAI presents us with red templar enemies who are archers/marksmen. from what I remember they still wear heavy, or at least medium/heavy-looking, armor. they’re deformed by red lyrium so it’s not really a helpful thing to note, but the red templar enemy faction in DAI’s stealth units, Shadows, still look like they’re wearing heavy or heavy-looking armor.

Light Armor tends to be for mages, but not exclusively. when we meet Leliana in DAO, she’s in Chantry robes, which iirc DAO defines as clothing technically (DAO has both LA and clothing as item categories). she wears these when she assists the Warden with the skirmish with soldiers in the Lothering Tavern. (I doubt she didn’t switch to other, more protective gear for the duration of the Fifth Blight though, regardless of player choice here). in the Magi Origin, there’s Lily, a Chanty initiate. she’s a temporary companion/party member and does some fighting. she’s also wearing the robes and the game classes her as a rogue. incidentally she can be equipped with a dagger and a mace.

the actual priesthood of the Chantry is made up entirely of women. men are only allowed to become true priests in the Imperial Chantry, which is the Chantry of Tevinter. in the southern Chantry, the only rank men are allowed to have is Brother. the best example of a Chantry Brother we’ve had as you say is Sebastian. Brother Burkel also springs to mind as a non-companion example. (he doesn’t fight but if you YouTube him you can see how he sounds and what he talks like when he’s speaking to the PC) men are allowed to occupy associated/adjacent roles like chanters and scholars. of particular note here is how the Chantry’s male acolytes, basically an ‘invisible army’, tend to tend to the less spiritual side of things; they keep the Chantry in good repair, fed and see to the physical well-being of their Andrastian charges (tying to the above excerpt about local Chantries and so on caring for the sick, although do note I can easily see female Chantrypeople doing that role too even if they are ‘priestesses’). the exception to this outside of Tevinter would be in post-DAI worldstates where Leliana was made Divine; she opens the priesthood to all genders and races. sth to bear in mind if your imported character is a male and you’re set on the whole priest aspect as opposed to a lower-ranked Brother.

on balance if you wanted to RP as a Chantry clergyperson (bear in mind “Chantry clergyperson” is my phrasing for the ease of this answer and not necessarily a label from the lore) I think the Rogue class angle would be more fitting. there are examples of Chantry clergypeople who are Rogues and fought as such in the lore (Leliana, Sebastian), and I can’t recall examples of templars in light armor or robed gear. A Chantry clergyperson more closely matches the role of a healer priest in a monastery; we can see from the lore there are mundane healing skills/professions and there’s a definite precedent for Chantry clergypeople to be caring for and tending to the sick. You could play the most skilled mundane healer Chantry clergyperson from a particular Chantry - perhaps even a formally trained physician who gave themselves to a life of service in the Chantry - and/or to capture the travelling angle, your character could be one of those clergypeople who travels to troubled areas in order to provide free healing and relief. if you wanted I think you could have them don a more protective form of equipment or a more protective version of Chantry robes for safety when travelling, or if they’re particularly combat-inclined, like Leliana in her mission in DA2, or Leliana’s Sacred Ashes trailer armor, or Lily’s Heroes of Dragon Age appearance.

I feel like if you went for the templar angle it sounds like you’d be leaning away from the heart of your character, which seems to be a healer monk/travelling priest/traveling healer-type deal. templars are sth different. you would also have to explain how a nomad person gained the powers and abilities of a templar, since that’s usually the purview of templars only, and usually requires templar training from the Order, and always the imbibing of lyrium. Alistair was a trainee who left before starting lyrium. him teaching the abilities to Warrior PCs or Warrior PCs reading how to be a templar in a book in DAO, Templar Hawke and Cassandra’s spec being the Templar spec in DAI are more like story/gameplay segregation. Cass is a Seeker of Truth, in truth, for instance, not a templar. it’s a bit more realistic and less handwaved in DAI for the PC at least - Way of the Templar is the sidequest through which the DAI PC gains the spec, and specifies that if you construct a lyrium philter (for the imbibing of lyrium) and “study the methods of the templars” (which = doing a lot of related reading) you can learn the secrets of the spec from someone who knows it or knows about it. on the subject of not being part of the Order, the character Ser is interesting because he knows the physical aspects of being a templar but makes it clear he’s not part of the Order. the abilities of a templar might not necessarily be what you’re looking for either - they’re about dispelling and nullifying magic, inhibiting spellcasting, not healing. usually these abilities are employed to fell demons, abominations and be turned against mages. also bear in mind the templar spec has so far been the purview of the Warrior class. imo a rogue like Leliana or Seb would be closer to what you’re describing, out of the 2 options in your ask.

hope this helps you decide or at least gives you some food for thought :)

@simonjadis has some great input below in the notes: if you’re open to making your character a Tevinter citizen, note that men (if applicable) have access to all levels of rank in the Imperial Chantry, and mages can be part of the clergy (if you decided that in the end being a mage was acceptable in this setting for your char). following on from the mage angle, although not a priest or part of the clergy, you could make a loyalist, faithful Andrastian spirit healer mage. Wynne in DAO is our best example of someone in this position so far.

[cullens-babe]

@ma-serannas-vhenan

Update >:)):

And btw when I was doing the Orzammar part, I looked up who was the better king bc in the beginning of the Orzammar quests, I didn’t pay attention when they said who wanted to be king and what they did and such so,,I was very Worried™️ about choosing the wrong kiNG SO-

AAAAH DHWBDB. I LOVE WYNEE SO MUCH DJWNDB. She’s calling out Alistair for how he was staring at Rose and hOW HE WAS “enraptured” BY HER!! And it started when he asked her why she was smirking and Alistair said how he had a fat cat BUT STILL WYNEE CALLED HIM OUT AND THEN SAID “So what guidance did you find in her swaying hips?” OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT DNWNSWB. I love Wynne. I’m gonna load my save back up and see if it happens again bc I LOVE that XD.

WAIT I GOT ANOTHER ALISTAIR BEING AWKWARD!! He literally asked Leliana about her “female-ness” AND WHAT TO DO IF HE THINKS A WOMAN IS SPECIAL AND WANTS TO WOO HER!!! I’m gonna load this until there’s no more Alistair being romantically awkward talks lol.

AWWWW. ALISTAIR BELIEVING ITS OKAY TO BE WEAK SOMETIMES!!! He’s so precious,,I better be able to keep him or I’m gonna cry lol.

Wait a minute,,Did Wynne just say she was 15 20 years ago?? So she’s only 35?? I thought she was like 60 something sbabsb. Unless she’s joking and I just didn’t get it-

AAAH NOO!! I FOUND THE WEREWOLVES BIT WHEN YOU ATTACK THE WOLVES,,,THEY HOWL AND WHIMPER!!! This game breaks my heart with literally the smallest things😭.

IM CRYING HYDRA FNWB. I found this video on YouTube about the companions on Alistair romance and UGHHHH I LOVE THIISSSSS!!!

AAAAH!! ZEVRAN BEING ALL PERSONAL ABOUT THEIR INTIMACY DNWBD. I’m sorry for shouting I just love this djwbdb.

HYDRA!!! A WEREWOLF IS LIKE,,SPEAKING AND ITS A WOMAN NAMED ENYLA AND SHES SAYING HOW I NEED TO GO TO HER HUSBAND AND TELL HIM HOW SHES DEAD AND WITH THE GODS,,I love this game even if it makes me really sad😭.

This oak tree really just said, “Perahps a poets soul is in me... Does that make me a poet tree?” I LOVE YOU OAK TREE!! THANK YOU FOR PUNS!!

NO I HAD TO KILL THE HERMIT!! I wanted to get the acorn and leave him alone,,but I had to kill him or give him Enyla’s scarf and I’m nOT GONNA DO THAT BUT I HAD TO KILL HIM😭. But hey I saved the oak tree I think.

Oh,,so there was this camp and everyone fell asleep bc I kept looking at things and like,,suddenly everyone was DEAD and Wynee was the only one alive (surprisingly since she’s like,,60??) and liKE YO DJWBSB. Scared the crap out of me for a second but hey she survived :))). And I SWEAR WYNNE BETTER NOT DIE >:(((.

Wynne (I keep switching her name bc I forget how it’s spelled like EVERYDAY DHWBS) is just wanting to do her best with the spirit and how it gave her a second chance at life,,,and how if Rose seems to be leading off of her path, Wynne will come back (if she’s dead) and do the old finger wagging like mothers do😭. I love her,,,

OOP,,I FOUND WITHERFANG (I THINK??) AND HMM,,TIME TO SEE IF I CAN GET THE DALISH ON MY SIDE :)))).

Okay so it wasn’t Witherfang but now I’m about to enter the Lair of the Werewolves so he’s most likely here?? And why do I feel a bit bad for the werewolves since they’re just tryna be protected and Ik they’re supposed to be the bad guys buT HNNNG THEYRE JUST PROTECTING THEIR HOME (sorta??) LIKE THE DALISH ARE😭.

Anyways that’s all for tonight >:))). Love youuu( ˘ ³˘)💙. Getting DA 2 between October 15-19. Idk which day it’ll be here but hey I’m still getting it >:)))). Goodnight🥺.

[prettypetitepika]

@taylorswift appreciation post:

About a year ago, I was at the 2019 Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas. I was there on coincidence with what was my job for a mobile gaming convention. I was done with my meetings and was walking past the venue location. My two absolute favorite artists are Taylor and Brendon Urie from P!ATD. So naturally I decided to purchase a ticket to see the first live performance of ME! I got to the show and it was one of my favorite moments ever. To see Taylor and Brendon open was magical and definitely was something to see coming into the Lover era. After halfway through the show, my boss demanded I show face at an after party. Networking was a big part of my job role. To give more context... I had started my job in February 2019 and at that time, I had noticed very misogynistic behavior, comments and remarks from my direct boss. Things like "we hired you to pimp you out." In my boss' mind, he hired me for being a woman. To "attract stupid men in the gaming world" to make them spend money. From the very first month I started to hear these remarks, I began looking for a new job. Sadly, gaming is a hard industry to job hop in, especially when you're desperate for a new company to just treat you like a human being. Fast forward back to the night of the Billboard awards and now to the after party. I walked to the after party only to find my boss schmoozing to some people from a partner company. One of them was a man... very tall and large in stature doing "as many tequila shots as he can to max out the company bar tab." I like a few drinks but while on the clock, I'm mindful of my alcohol. With this said, the after the party was done, my boss volun-told me to help him, that man and a woman clean up the party. After we did, we were going to "walk from the MGM to the Wynn for a Diplo concert". Literally one end of the Vegas strip to another. That was the idea, the execution on the other hand was something else...

After the party, all four of us started to walk outside. This man started to cling to myself and the woman from earlier, who turned out to be his boss. He was stringing along like an incredibly heavy sack of potatoes. He was sloppy drunk. Tripping over us and holding onto our shoulders and waists. After seeing the struggle, my now inebriated boss hailed a cab. The woman went to the front seat. Meanwhile, my not so tall boss went all the way to the left of the back and that man went to the middle seat. This giant person went to the middle and it made no sense to me. I literally out loud said "Why is the biggest person sitting in the middle?!" No one acknowledged my comment. So I reluctantly sat next to the man.

**Note: the next part of this may be triggering for some. This happened to me personally and I know how it can effect some people, even just reading it. With that said, the cab took off, the man put his arm around the back of my seat, and around my shoulder. The drive was only supposed to last maybe 7 minutes... to me, it was an eternity. The man started to bring his hand down and gr*pe my right breast. I almost couldn't believe it. I thought I was in a nightmare and I couldn't wake up. This man kept going as I pushed his hand away. I kept clutching my purse to my chest as he tried to reach his hand up my blouse. My elbow digging into my lap, trying to create a barrier between him and I. I wanted to scream but nothing came out. We finally pulled up to the hotel, I ran out of the cab. Waited for my boss to come out and walked in. As we walked, the man was now 20 feet behind us. He knew what he had done. The same man who was so clingy and touchy before was now making distance because he KNEW. I looked at my boss and lowly said "He gr*ped me in the taxi." He looked up at me and said "Well that's not good." And kept walking... I thought he was too drunk to realize what I had said so I sent it on WhatsApp, knowing it couldn't be deleted. He read the text and did nothing. I looked at the woman with us and demanded she come to the bathroom with me. I ran in and like word vomit, yelled what the man had done. The first thing out of her mouth was "I knew he'd do something like this."

She knew. And I was infuriated. How could amyone let such an awful excuse of a person come to a convention, network and drink?! When we came out of the bathroom, I saw the man and ran. Sobbing, I ran to the next restroom. The woman and my boss said they'd escort me back to my hotel. I ran to my room feeling so dirty. Shower after shower and I couldn't stop crying. I thought why didn't I say something to the cab driver, why? But I was just trying to keep my shitty job at that point. I was trying not to cause a scene that would affect my company...

The morning after, I tried to get home but literally EVERY single flight was booked until 2am. My boss reluctantly gave me the "day off". But I was stuck in Vegas. Feeling empty, violated, ruined. I knew with the incident fresh in my mind, I called a lawyer from back home in Texas. I explained the incident and how horrible my boss was. From there, we filed with the EEOC and started a discrimination case. For my company and my boss dehumanizing me, treating less than my worth and attempting to use me as a woman. Following immediately after the incident and the lawsuit beginning, I became a phantom. A ghost. I was invisible. No longer did anyone talk to me, look at me, invite me to lunch. I was moved to an office by myself. I'd email my boss for help on clients to never receive a response. I was just there. Physically. Mentally, I was miserable. I had developed anxiety and couldn't eat... this went on for months.

In March 2020, COVID19 hit and we were ordered to work from home. This was music to my ears. I was still a ghost... but at least my dog made for a better coworker.

Today, Friday, May 15th, 2020, my boss sent a Zoom meeting invite for me to discuss a client. It was out of the ordinary but I was hopeful. That hope didn't last long. As I logged in, I saw the 2 HR representatives of the company. I knew my fate after seeing their names on my computer screen. They said due to COVID, they were reorganizing the company. Meanwhile, they said i was terminated due to "performance". Immediately after I filed my lawsuit, they bombarded me with emails asking if I could do my job because of my "disability". They were talking about the new found anxiety that I developed thanks to them. The thing was, I was never trained, coached, developed. Nothing for my job role. They expected me as a "woman" to bring on male clients. They really did try to pimp me out. When that didn't work... Well, as you could guess, at 11am this morning, I was fired. Terminated. I was sent a termination contract that in short, they'd "generously give me a severance pay of $2k." But also in that letter? A surprise clause of if I signed and was paid, even if I still took them to court with my lawsuit, no matter the verdict, they'd owe me nothing. Right now? My lawyer is helping me figure that out but you can bet I won't sign that document for $2k.

Why am I typing this all now? It's more cathartic at this point but more importantly... that night that was so awful for me. After enduring being treated like this for so long... I'm done with that chapter. After that night, ANYTIME I'd listen to ME, I'd either cry or remember that terrible night. I was so angry from what had happened. I was devastated that Taylor and Brendon were the highlight of my night and to now later remember that horrible event. This morning after me getting fired? I hung up and cried.

Afterward, I turned on Taylor's album Lover, and laughed as I Forgot You Existed started playing. Eventually, YouTube had made it's way to ME!... and today was the first time I listened and sang along... happily. No tears, no flash backs to something horrendous. Just joy. Because for now? I'm free. Free of that company, free of my assh*le of a boss, free of people putting the blame on me. The lawsuit is still on going but I remember Taylor going through hers not too long ago. After all of that, if she can do it, so can I.

Pray I'll win my lawsuit. I've won half the battle so far with my new found freedom.

I've had ME! on repeat all day. No longer is that song a tragic memory but now a freedom anthem. 💖

[ohitsjustfee]

This one’s for the ~ladies~

If you’re a woman and you found my Instagram from your man looking at me I wish to extend my understanding of the pain it caused you, along with an apology. There were two phrases that scarred me in my youth:

Behind every beautiful woman is a man tired of fucking her.”-Unknown &

“Men are only as faithful as their options” -Chris Rock (God bless his ex-wife.)

I don’t mean to make a generalization, but as a woman I have noticed through my perception (and the candor of my female friends) that when we watch porn (if we even do) we have this subjective way of removing ourselves from the porn itself. A lot of us think “Woo! Look at them go! I’d love to try that position! Yeah!” After which a lot of us immediately switch our focus back to general life stuff.

I’m sure there’s some women that look at the naked male form and think “Mmm yeah, I want to fuck him. I wish my husband’s dick was that size.” Sadly, for the most part we just enjoy the context and setup of pornography and how it could be applied to our individual imaginations. I don’t know many women who can get off to a picture of a man. This difference in wiring can cause us heavy confusion.

Trans YouTuber Natalie Wynn who came to earth when Einstein nutted a load into Mozart’s bussy, and was shat out while Mozart received a rusty trombone from Vincent Van Gogh, has some great insight into this. The trans community in general really sheds some insight into this schism. When she was still in a male body with male hormones she was able to be aroused simply from a picture. Deep into her transition she realized that estrogen therapy altered the way she became aroused. For Natalie, now it is more about the connection and context of her crush, and she needn’t orgasm to enjoy sex.

Alright, so we have two notes from this for straight men to take:

We don’t need to orgasm in order to enjoy intimacy. For the love of god stop pounding away until we’re raw because you won’t feel like a man unless we affirm you with theatrics and rhythmic kegals. Sometimes we just like being close to you, all cuddly up inside and stuff.

Women don’t tend to get visually aroused to the extent that men can. This is why you will often hear women complain about “dick pics.”

Most women, if they’re over 25 at least, have reached this conclusion on their own. So here marches in the harsh reality that men are biologically wired to want to fuck a variety of women, and so when they look at imagery of women on Instagram they are very likely fantasizing about bending her over. Or perhaps they fantasize about having their heads squished between the woman’s thick, strong, meaty thighs. I don’t kink shame. Either way, they want them. Sincerely. In real life. And they would.

We see our men hastily try to close the browser window of some scantly clad Instagram chick, and GOD DOES IT FUCKING HURT, but if you admit it hurts you are coined as irrational or expecting too much, which isn’t far off considering the harsh reality that we discussed earlier.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt like hell for a lot of us, so what do we do with that? Get angry? Irrational. Cry? Have a go at it, but you’re still being unrealistic. Bottle it up inside and let it slowly chip away at our feelings of self worth like some sort of Chinese water torture? Yeah. I guess that will do.

Ladies, I’m an IG thot and I’m sorry. Take solice in the fact that I have a network of IG thots that I speak to and we tend to talk about how much we’re hurt by our partner’s proclivities. As hypocritical as that might be, I’ll throw myself under the bus to make you feel better.

The pain of knowing your men fantasize about humping random IG strangers is like a dagger in the heart. Understand that I’m an IG thot who has felt that very dagger and seen the room spin on several occasions. Let me recruit my ex boyfriend Christopher for this discussion. I’ve caught him jacking off to my friend’s pictures more times than I can recall. (Seriously. Their Facebook pictures. When real porn exists, and is free.)

Christopher: “I mean... it’s just that we need variety. We’re wired to like variety. That doesn’t mean we don’t love you. It’s just like if I were to eat steak every night. I’d get sick of it, wouldn’t you?”

Myself: “God, that doesn’t help at all. Now I feel even more like a boring and disposable piece of meat.”

Christopher: “Well, think of it this way. We may fantasize about fucking them, but we don’t fantasize about going grocery shopping with them.”

So, there you have it. That’s about as much comfort as I can personally squeeze out of this blog. I should make a disclaimer that #notallmen and #notallwomen have these drastically opposed wirings that lead to heart ache. I hate painting with broad strokes. But, you must admit, enough of us feel this way that it justifies the existence of this blog post.

Your body is fine. Your body is fine. Your body is fine. Your man is just still wired to spread his seed. There’s nothing wrong with you. He isn’t fantasizing about taking the woman to Target, at least, remember? If you were a half naked Instagrammer with a following you’d still have to deal with this pain because of BiOLoGY. Remind yourself of that the next time you see a “Hot Girl™” on your man’s device.

Your body is fine. Your body is fine. Your body is fine.

Rocking back and forth hugging my knees in the shower

MY BODY IS FINE. MY BODY IS FINE. MY BODY IS FINE.