#Arielle has a thinky thought

[justabrowncoatedwench]

Dragon Age NPC Ages in DA: The Veilguard

This assumes that the 9 10 years between Dragon Age Inquisition and Dragon Age: The Veilguard refer to the Trespasser DLC (as in the last time Varric would have seen Solas; confirmed in Dev Q&A on 6/14/24). This places DAV in 9:54. Characters who showed up in a previous game will not be repeated in the lists for later games they also appeared in (i.e., Leliana is under DAO, not DAI).

Read more for length & spoiler reasons. The ages listed are assuming they have not had their birthday in 9:54 yet.

ETA1: I used the ages & evidence summarized by @dalishious in this post, superseding those ages with newer evidence where available or my own interpretation of textual evidence (when given a range I personally favor smack in the middle more often than not).

ETA2: Changed year/ages to reflect the Q&A information that Veilguard is 10 years post-Trespasser, not 9 as originally stated.

ETA3: It's officially set in 9:52, so just subtract 2 years from everyone.

Dragon Age: Origins - 9:30 - 24 years prior

Alistair Theirin - 43

Morrigan - 49

Leliana - 50

Zevran Arainai - 48

Oghren Kondrat - 66

Wynne - RIP (would've been 71)

Shale - Eternal

Sten (now Arishok) - 67

Loghain Mac Tir - 75

Anora Mac Tir - 50

Dragon Age: Awakening - 9:31 - 23 years prior

Nathaniel Howe - 53

Anders - 54

Sigrun - 48

Velanna - 48

Dragon Age 2 - 9:30-9:37 - 24-17 years prior

Hawke - 48

Carver/Bethany Hawke - 43

Fenris - ~54

Isabela - 54

Merrill - ~47

Sebastian Vael - 46

Aveline Vallen - ~59

Varric Tethras - 53

Dragon Age Inquisition - 9:41-9:44 - 13-10 years prior

Josephine Montilyet - 41

Cullen Rutherford - 42

Cassandra Pentaghast - 50

Solas - ~2000 (appears mid-40s)

Sera - 33

Vivienne de Fer - 57

Blackwall/Thom Rainier - 58

the Iron Bull - 50

Dorian Pavus - 42

Cole - Ageless (appears 20, or he may have aged into his 30s if he were made more human in DAI)

Kieran - 22

[justabrowncoatedwench]

I totally agree! It's what inspired my entire AU fic series! (Five+ big fics are planned, I've been chewing on them all for over a decade, but only chapter 1 & prologue of the first one is up on AO3 rn, with ch 2 in the works.) I'm writing an AU rn where Maric had Loghain and not Eamon raise Alistair (cuz it never made sense why he'd have his son raised by the single younger brother of his dead wife instead of his married father of 1 best friend).

Spoilers for the book, Dragon age: Stolen throne in the photos bellow

IS THIS WHY LOGHAIN DID WHAT HE DID IN FUCKING ORIGINS?!?!??? Like this seems like him solidifying the mindset he needed for his actions in the game. He fuckin promised Maric, he swore, if it ever came to it again, he would save his men and not Maric.

He knew their would be consequences and he followed the choice anyway, and now in face of those consequences, he could have gone two different ways, and the influence of Marics words like directed the decision. This feels like the moment Marics fate in ostagar was solidified. Fuckin hell. This book has been enlightening around who Loghain is and his mindset and Maric and their dynamic and ahhhh

[theotherjax]

So I’ve been Considering the Coconuts extensively for a while now, and think I want to get some of it out into words, because Moana is personally important to me in a way no Disney film has ever come close to being. Close enough to write meta about it, which is a thing I basically never do. But I cannot stop my gushing thinky love and particularly about how this movie nuances (I don’t think subverts is the correct word) the Campbellian Hero’s Journey, in a way that I think is extremely interesting for what it says about the stories we tell, and have the potential to tell, about girls’ coming of age. Now my academic hat is off so this isn’t going to be Rigorous but. Here are Coconut Thoughts. Below the cut: on the inflection of two (and a half) Campbellian moments in Moana.

The first nuance I’m thinking of is Moana’s call to adventure/refusal of the call. On the one hand, these stages are present; the call is right there in the song. At first I thought, though, that there is no refusal - Moana attempts to follow her own inner call to adventure even before the external instigating incident happens to her. But actually what’s really interesting here is that the refusal, as well, comes from Moana herself, and does so in a unique way. Moana is the only Disney heroine I can think of who is embedded in her community. Her most significant relationships are with her immediate family, but she has meaningful interactions with others in her village that reflect her place and, as another song goes, the possibility of happiness in it. And for once, the possibility of happiness is a real one! Unlike Belle, Moana isn’t looking for “more than this provincial life” - she is a girl who loves her island. While the “Where You Are”/”How Far I’ll Go” sequence might seem to mirror the “Under the Sea”/”Part of Your World” combination, it is clear that Ariel sings out of a deep sense of being an outsider and oppressed by her family’s society’s expectations - “bet they don’t reprimand their daughters” - while Moana sings about how “I’ll be satisfied if I play along”.

It makes sense that while a hero would have a refusal of the call, a heroine might not: the refusal indicates the possibility, the desire for personal fulfillment without a quest, which, in a patriarchal context, is present for the hero but out of reach of the heroine. But while there are some shades of this for Moana, who is certainly torn between duty and expectations and personal fulfillment, for her the refusal is mostly about loving her community and wanting to play her part in it. And that makes her story one not of overcoming, but of reconciliation. Not of stepping out, but of taking in.

Which is even further pushed by how Moana’s pivotal moment of triumph is not an Atonement with the Father: it is, most properly, a Reconciliation with the Mother. While the Campbellian stage is about a confrontation, the shattering of ego, and eventual overcoming and ascendancy, Moana instead transforms and restores Te Fiti. It’s actually interesting to compare this to Star Wars, where Luke’s confrontation/reconciliation with Darth Vader is in fact far more true to the model than the many many many derivative stories in which the confrontation with the villain father ends in the hero’s physical victory in the interest of overcoming the shadow of the parent. Moana and Luke both “win” by an act of healing, Moana specifically by saying “you know who you are” - applying the lessons she had learned in the act of reconciliation, and again, reaffirming her role not as someone who overcomes but as someone who takes in. Moana saves her world not by rising above anyone in her self-fulfillment - just as her desire for self-fulfillment is not coached in terms of rising above her community - but by recognizing and creating connection. The fact that this connection is with a mother figure is I think also very meaningful, especially considering how Moana’s bonds with her grandmother and mother enable her quest. While, Moana has to prove herself to her father (and to Maui), women’s kinship and solidarity is absolute, and it is the root of mutual faith and community.

Which brings me to the “half”. I call it that because it is the one stage where what’s fascinating is not how it’s inflected, but that it exists at all. And that is Moana’s return to her village as “Mistress of the Two Worlds” - the island and the sea - whose quest has not only fulfilled her, but allowed her to change her community. And that’s frankly amazing. You see girls do it in other stories,but the only other Disney heroine I can think about whose quest is meaningful to anyone but herself is Merida (who lacks Moana’s crucial communal embeddedness). Ariel gains her wish and goes off to live with her prince and... that’s it. No other merperson or human cares. Mulan comes back home a war heroine, but her grandmother really just cares about her finding a potential husband. Elsa becomes queen aaaaaaand... status quo. But Moana’s change is huge, it is visible, it is central stage with the shell on top of the stones. She reconciles her conflicting sides; she reconciles the goddess and the world; and now she reconciles herself and her community by creating a new order that allows her to belong in it fully. 

And honestly, that’s incredible. It validates communal belonging. It severs the “not like other girls” trope at the knee. It utterly destroys the home/quest binary that positions the hero as reviled-to-elevated outsider who is both better than their society and cannot belong in it, and all the cringey messianic undertones that comes with that. It shows a girl who doesn’t have to escape, but can come home and change it. It is, chiefly, a film about the possibility of reconciliation, and in it both change and acceptance. And to me that makes it hella empowering. Like. Wow.

Also coconuts. Consider!

[simba-bonfamille-lyons]

☾ ♥ ● ♦

I put this under a readmore bc it’s LONG AS FUCK im sorry

☾: Favorite moment from your Muse's canon, and why. (If your Muse is an OC, then favorite aspect of their story.)

i love this question.

Belle: my fave is def the scene where she’s taking care of the Beast after the wolves attack them and he gets all grumpy and she Shuts That Shit Down. i take so much of my inspo for belle from that scene alone tbh--but i also do love the opening sequence and how could you not love I WANT ADVENTURE IN THE GREAT WIDE SOMEWHEREEEE

Simba: ugh, so many good moments, but the best scenes in the whole movie are def the stars scene with mufasa and when simba sees rafiki. i also LOVE LOVE nala and simba’s reunion. also, ofc, okay this part is def my fave: the running back to pride rock UGH THAT SCENE

Toulouse: FFT FFT FFT!! that was legit the only part of the movie i remembered from watching it as a little kid. also when he and ber are fighting on the piano, i love that scene, it’s so cute.

Bambi: the part where thumper and bambi are like hanging out and thumper is teaching bambi to say shit. and he’s like BIRD BIRD BIRD BIRD and he’s walking along following this lil butterfly, ugh so precious my darling.

Perdita: gosh there is not a lot of canon perdy tbh but i do love her and anita’s relationship. also when she’s kickin ass and taking names to save her babies. also how she really doesn’t want to get covered in coal and pongo says “c’mon perdy time to put on your make up!” 

Sweet: everything?? about him??? he’s so great?? all his lines?? but i love the part where he’s taking care of the old king the best bc before that moment he’s kind of been liek quippy and comic relief but u get to really see his compassion and strength and steadiness in that scene and i love it.

Maui: his backstory, definitely. that was what made me really interested in playing him bc he totally models slyth but is actually a big ole puff and just wants people to love him. also i like the scene where he leaves moana after she Fucks Up (tm) i know that’s probably a weird scene to love but idk i thought it was super interesting.

Hercules: alskdjfladjkflaskjdfljfl EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM?? herc is just my precious darling. but i love how awkward he is but then how FIERCE he gets when he’s protecting people. like you think what a soft marshmellow how is he a hero and then when faced with danger he RISES and it just always warms my heart. my fave is the hydra scene bc that’s the first time he’s like rly sUCCESSFUL as a hero and it’s such a good fight and he uses his strength to his ADVANTAGE ugh i lvoe hercules.

Attina: ahaha she also doesn’t have a lot of canon, but def my favorite is when they find out that ariel has been #gettindown at the club and attina is like NO ABSOLUTELY NOT and hten everyone makes puppy faces at her and she caves so easily. i based a lot of her character on that. like she seems like a hardass but she’s rly not she wants her sisters to be HAPPY

Akela: gosh, he really does not have a lot of canon to go off of at all, in either movie. i’m gonna say the Law of the Jungle. That’s really important to his development in my head. also the scene in the live-action with grey where he tells him that the runts get eaten sometimes bc it’s like the only time he’s not the Serious Alpha but to me it just showed this like softer side to him? that was playful--and i based a lot of his character on that.

♥: One thing you love about your Muse.

Belle: laksdjflkajdf what don’t i love about belle? i mean as a character as a whole i love how inspiring she was to all young girls who loved to read and encouraging girls to be SMART and not be SHY about it. to EMBRACE their bRAINS which is such an important lesson for young girls. and i really love that about my belle too. that she is very demure about a lot of things but DO NOT QUESTION HER INTELLIGENCE. it is the one thing she will unflinchingly defend about herself and i don’t think we see that enough in female characters.

Simba: i love how much simba loves himself. i make fun of it quite a bit, bc he can be so over the top with it, but i really appreciate his level of self-care because that’s something i struggle with. like--not so much confidence, i have a decent amount of that but just, he really does take care of his overall physical health. he exercises, he showers, he eats properly (tho i mean he eats a lot too and lets himself indulge which is important). but he like idk keeps his beard trimmed and takes care of his skin and this sounds like a really weird thing to admire but since i struggle w depression, it’s nice to see ppl who function normally even tho he also struggles w depression. ALSO i love his flirting. haha. inspires me to be a better flirt.

Toulouse: kind of self care too, in a way? i love that lou is unapologetic about who he is, even when he doesn’t like himself. and he really does take care of himself before anyone else. like he does not let other’s opinions (except his siblings) influence his decisions and that’s something i struggle with. it actually makes lou one of my most genuine characters, because if he is sweet to you, if he helps you, if he protects you, he’s doing it because he wants to, not out of any obligation. as someone who struggles to say “no” to people, it’s admirable.

Bambi: ahaha honestly there isn’t much i admire about bambi. not because he’s a bad person but because he’s a teen who is still finding himself and struggling with a lot of self loathing and is in that place in his life where he is making mistakes. but, i do like that, writing him, im getting a--chance to look back and rexamine teenhood from a new perspective which is interesting and fun.

Perdita: i love how FIERCE she is. i always say perdita’s attitude is mine if i didn’t care about what people thought of me and that’s definitely true. i love that the first impression that paul got from her was she didn’t care what anyone thinks BUT i love that she really actually does too bc it just adds so much dynamic.

Sweet: gosh i love how level-headed he is. as someone who is temperamental i really appreciate characters like sweet and poca and haku who are very centered and strong and sturdy. i appreciate their calm presence in my head. i also LVOE how poetic writing him is. he’s one of my characters i feel like i can indulge lyrically in my words with the most.

Maui: i love how conflicted maui is. i love that he has this really stark duality to him and is much more than his cocky exterior and he genuinely really does care about people, not just about the attention, though that is a big draw. i also love what a BOY he is. it’s really fun to play him walking that line of fuckboi and genuine person.

Hercules: what a PRECIOUS MUFFIN HE IS. i just love the whole super strength but has no way to control it thing. it’s just a great duality to play with. like he is so gentle and so afraid of hurting people but has this awesome power. he’s just very precious to me just so sweet and good and pure. 

Attina: my self indulgent bae ahaha. i love that she’s a MERMAID i love that she’s so bubbly. i don’t have any BUBBLY characters. and she’s so happy and smiley. i mean, simba is kinda like that both of them just Radiate Joy. and i also love playing sisters. i love love the family dynamic and the fact that there is so many of them, because it just leads to such RICH character development. i love what a romantic she is. i love how soft and kind but how protective. how scared but how brave. ugh my beeb

Akela: he’s another really calm person. i love that akela doesn’t linger on his mistakes. he has regrets. he acknowledges when he’s done something wrong and then--wait for it--HE MOVES ON. he doesn’t dwell. he doesn’t beat himself up. he picks himself up and dust himself off and moves on. which is so refreshing bc most of my characters are wallowers ahhaa

●: If you could say just one thing to your Muse, what would it be?

Belle: GIRL I S2G GET SOME FUCKIN SELF CONFIDENCE it just really annoys me that she needs to be poked and prodded into feeling good about herself bc she’s so BRAVE AND STRONG AND KIND AND WONDERFUL she’s perfect and she SHOULD KNOW THAT SHE IS WORTH GOOD THINGS

Simba: honey, stop, trying, to, please, everyone,, it’s not gonna work and you’re just gonna wind up making a mess of things. also i love you /pets

Toulouse: i s2g i have so many things that i could say to toulouse but if i could ever interact w some real form of him u know what i would do? i would give him a goddamn hug. just a good, long hug where he can put his lil head on my shoulder and just relax. he craves physical affection ppl

Bambi: i would give him support about his choices and tell him it’s okay to be afraid but he should be brave too bc being brave is the best fuck u to all the people who want to scare you.

Perdita: i understand why you did what you did and i don’t blame you for it. 

Sweet: keep doin you babe

Maui: IT’S OKAY YOU CHEATED JUST LIVE UP TO IT NOW (also you are real hot and we should date)

Hercules: embrace ur powers lil honey u are wonderful

Attina: relax babe you should take care of YOURSElF (she won’t listen to me)

Akela: i’m sorry about your family *gives him snuggles*

♦: Relationship with your Muse.

im gonna answer this like “how does the muse come about” kinda deal bc this question is weird

Belle: well her voice comes so easily to me i love it except it’s SO thinky. she is always who i write the longest posts on bc she just examines everything but i love it bc i so do not think like that but it opens my mind to interesting thought processes i haven’t explored myself before. though i also edit her the most bc her dialogue is SO HARD. it’s getting better tho as she gets more confident but it only takes one set back to go back to stuttering and holding her tongue.

Simba: gosh. i love his voice. it’s so COLORFUL. i can write simba all day because even in his darkest moments he is so BRIGHT and he feels everything so deeply. i love his background. i love writing about africa and islam and how he is bisexual and his race (but in the little things like how he has sensitive skin and likes movies like Hairspray lol). he’s really so different from me in so many ways, but he’s also an accumulation of like all the men in my life i’ve admired so he has a v special place in my heart.

Toulouse: gosh i love toulouse. idk his voice comes SO naturally to me. he is, without a doubt, the character i just instinctually know the best. i can’t even explain it but he just popped into my head completely formed. i knew everything about him almost immediately and even the things that came later just fell into place so easily. i just love him because he is so complicated and dynamic and feels so deeply while also having a really complicated relationship with those emotions. writing him is both frustrating bc he always makes the same mistakes, but very easy for me.

Bambi: ugh i love bam. he’s another one that i just loved from the start. i wanted him for so so long before i actually got him and he just mad sense to me. i love his shyness. i like writing his view of the world since he def has so much influence from books and movies and he thinks in like tropes a lot and i’ve never written like that before and it’s super fun.

Perdita: i love how concise she is. i love all the sharp language i get to use with her. how every sentence i feel like i hit the period mark really fiercely. every sentence is important and to the point. she doesn’t like meander and as someone with flowy writing it’s nice to be able to know that i can do shorter stuff.

Sweet: UGH i love the poetry to his voice. making him a poet was a great move on my part bc i just looooove it. i love his voice. how calm. how gentle. how wise. and beautiful tbh. also all his experience is really fun to write. he’s like a fully formed person.

 Maui: i think i mentioned this but what a BOY he is. i love it. i love being able to play with the line between saying shitty sexist things but not knowing they’re shitty and sexist and really being a (mostly) genuine person but not always kosher or PC or anything like that.

Hercules: im still getting used to his voice but i really like how much he curses lmao he is like FUCK FUCK FUCK in his head at all times and i love that bc he’s so soft and smol and it’s such a funny contrast. also i get to play with humor and irony a lot with him and that’s fun. hopefully i can do more allusions to mythology once i start working with his powers more and that’ll be fun

Attina: i love her OCD. i think it makes for really interesting writing because people with OCD repeat phrases and stuff a lot and always having to be hyperaware of her actions like--remembering she doesn’t like to touch people and remembering that she locks the door nine times and that she doesn’t eat food from public places. it just really plants me in her head every time i write her.

Akela: his connection to nature. tbh being able to play as a wolf im ngl. but also a LEADER that people RESPECT AND LISTen TO. also i love how his voice is sad but not depressingly so. so it makes it really interesting to write like balancing all that emotional with his cool, level-headness. 

[justabrowncoatedwench]

See, my problem as someone who does dream of becoming a regency romance novelist someday is that a trope of the genre is a major pet peeve of mine and I WILL fight editors and publishers if they try to make me include it.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

Slowly being driven insane by my ire at how little people understand what service-learning is even after I've put in the legwork to explain it & provide resources & reference material on it for my colleagues to refer to when guiding their youth on filling out the application for this *service-learning award*.

So much of this is JUST community service, and you can fix it just by including "I would like to learn how to manage a project/budget/improve my public speaking/etc" to scrape by above the bar for this. And even that isn't really service-learning! But I'll take it!

[justabrowncoatedwench]

Yes, free Palestine. Yes, Palestinians deserve justice. No, I don’t support the actions or politics of Israel’s government, and never have. I shouldn’t have to answer for that, as I am not an Israeli Jew, I’m an American. And I used to think a lot of stuff went without saying, but I know better now, so asking American - or non-Israeli - Jews about their opinion on Israel as a litmus test is boldly, blatantly antisemitic and you’re an asshole if you do it.

But also, underlying all this, is the fact that the conversation around Paletsine and Israel is divorced from the reasons and actions that founded Israel in the first place. Yes, Zionists wanted a country, a place of safety. Why? Because of the Holocaust, because of rampaging antisemitism. And they got one, in the Middle East, why? Because England wanted to break up the former Ottoman Empire and didn’t want to welcome Jewish refugees to their own shores, and when England decided to back out of the region, they tapped the United States on the shoulder and America stepped forward in their place as a colonizing enforcer in the region.

You cannot talk about the issues surrounding Israel without remembering why Jews wanted to return to our ancient, historical homeland where there were and still are native Jews. And y’know, not for nothing, but the powers in the region at the time of Israel’s founding were pretty violently adamant that they didn’t want to accept Jewish refugees of the Holocaust either. No one wanted to provide any kind of refuge for the survivors of brutal ethnic cleansing and genocide. There were quotas, for how many would be allowed in, yes, even to America. Ships full of people seeking safety were turned away, sent back to Europe, to Germany. To death.

I am not and would never suggest that what Israel is perpetrating against Palestinians isn’t egregious, isn’t genocide. But you cannot separate the founding of Israel - yes, by colonizers, several of them behemoths of power - from the fact that the Jews who were seeking refuge in that region, who wanted to simply find safety, were at that time themselves the survivors and relatives of victims of genocide. And were being used by much larger, much more powerful, and deeply non-altruistic colonizer states to move chess pieces around a game board that should never have been a game board in the first place.

Victims of a genocide that has had a lasting impact on the global population of Jews to this day. We are still not back at the global population of Jews that existed before the Holocaust. And it’s not by a small margin either.

All I feel when I see this divorce, this lack of comment, of understanding of the roots of the issues in and around Israel and Palestine is fear, very warranted fear, because those same and similar voices that are rightfully very angrily calling Israel and the Israeli government a colonizer state have also very insidiously (in other conversations, in other instances) denied the Holocaust ever happened. And to not include what led to the creation of Israel in the conversation about what Israel is doing to Palestinians is to bank on uneducated “woke” people being whipped into a frenzy of outrage strong enough to ignore any mention of the larger powers at play and the genocide that brought about the creation, the manufacture of this colonizer state in the first place.

And I can’t bring this up on the actual posts discussing what’s happening or posts casually implying antisemitic points of view about what is happening, because I know exactly what will happen to me, a Jew, trying to educate on the bigger picture at play. I will be called a Zionist as perhaps the most polite word used against me, I will be targeted, harassed, and threatened. And I just don’t have the energy to open that door. So I’ve made this post, my own post, under a readmore and with minimal tags, just to get it out there, for the people who follow me and are actually inclined to listen without leaping, open handed, for my throat before they’re done.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

Rewatching Leverage, picking up on fun details, trying to find/catalogue them, as I do when I re-consume media I love xD

We know a couple of the characters’ hometowns! Or states anyway, even though it’s never stated explicitly in dialogue! (This got long so I put in a readmore.)

Tl;dr: Eliot was born and raised in Kentucky, and Parker was born and spent her childhood in Illinois*. And Nate we know was born and raised in Boston.

*Presuming she was not moved across state lines during her bounce into/through the foster system or moved across state lines with her bio family (unlikely).

The Two-Horse Job gives us both Parker’s and Eliot’s. Parker, in her flashback to being about 9 or so (based on the actors’ ages, both Young Parker’s and Beth Riesgraf) when she saw a “horse kill a clown”, the flashback places us in Camden, Illinois. I’d guess based on her age that Camden, Illinois is either Parker’s hometown or at the least Illinois is her home state, considering the imprecise age of her entrance into the foster system. In this same job, the client is his former fiancee and her father, who can be reasonably believed not to have gone through a big move. Their farm (and the job itself) takes place in Kentucky, telling us that Eliot grew up in Kentucky. (Aimee’s contentious greeting to Eliot about Southern welcomes etc also makes it clear this is not a new town/state, even if it could possibly be a new farm/property.)

Another fun thing is that Leverage is *very* good at having actors’ cast to the ages of their characters, or aging their characters according to their actor’s age. We see this in the entire main cast. For example, in The Two Horse Job Young Parker’s actress is 9, the flashback she appears in was 20 years before present day, and in present day Beth Riesgraf was 30 during season 1. Alec Hardison is 22 in season 1 (per him being explicitly 24 in season 3), and so is Aldis Hodge. etc etc...

So, from this, we can extrapolate that if Eliot (mid-30s, since Christian Kane was 36 at the time) was last home 8 years ago (Aimee’s accusation about him having not called or written or contacted her in 8 years), he was last home when he was about 28. Without precise information on how long he was in the army - he was implied to have been a green beret (The Experimental Job; Delta Force specifically, from a The Office Job DVD commentary) - we can take an educated guess that Eliot was probably last home about when he was discharged from the army and before taking up freelance retrieval/mercenary work.

I’m comfortable with this guess because of two reasons. One, he and Aimee have the conversation in the barn that the last time he left it was because she got married, and that every time he left before that he’d come back. This lines up with him admitting later that he made a promise to two “people” (Aimee and the US Army) and found he couldn’t keep them both, and that once he was discharged from the army he likely went home to see if Aimee and he could take up with each other again (is my strong feeling about that). BUT, between his previous departure and his final return she’d gotten married, so he left for good. Two, we get a flashback in this job during that very same conversation where Aimee asks what his possible reason could’ve been for “dropping off the face of the planet” that shows us Eliot barely standing between two thugs who have him by the arms, interrogating him about a monkey. This suggests to me that he was captured on a freelance job. Of course, he could’ve been a freelancer for years already when he returned home to find Aimee married, but we know enough of Eliot’s reputation and skills in the present day of season 1 Leverage to suggest that it could have been an earlier job in his independent career. A possibility, not a guarantee, of course, but still a good one I think.

Another fun fact about Eliot that lines up pretty perfectly with this theory! In The Last Dam Job he tells Nate that before he killed a man not in the line of duty, "he had God in his heart, and he had a flag on his shoulder." and "he has not seen that kid for 10 years”. The Last Dam Job aired in 2012, making Eliot (per Christian Kane’s age during filming/airing) to be about 39, suggesting that Eliot had not killed a man outside of his military line of duty for the US Army until he was 29. This lines up really well with the extrapolated information from The Two-Horse Job that Eliot was last home, presumably post-discharge, at 28.

No detailed puzzle pieces yet on where Hardison grew up, though he also went through the foster system, albeit without as much implied bouncing from home to home as Parker did. Plus he stayed in it until he was 18, versus Parker who ran away and never went back. Ditto on Sophie, though I think we’ll never really know for Sophie, since it could risk the Mystery. xD And Nate we know was a born and raised Boston boy (season 2 ep 1).

Addendum/Note: The assumption that the characters are relative to their actor’s ages plays out pretty closely for all 3 of the younger members of the team (Eliot, Hardison, Parker), and at this point also does for Sophie (mystery woman in her 40s, Gina Bellman was 42 during season 1). But we do have canon info on Nate’s birthdate, assuming his passport in The Lost Heir Job is accurate and not a fake, meaning that Timothy Hutton is 5 years older than Nate.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

Some friends helped give me the pieces that got me to figuring out why I hate dating apps and online dating every time I've tried it.

It feels like speedrunning.

I dislike speedrunning games. It doesn't interest me, I feel it defeats the purpose of the game (namely RPGs, which are the games I play most & the speedruns that get recommended to me because I already like those games), and it's finishing something for the sake of finishing it versus the gameplay itself.

So you take my feelings (personal as they are; I certainly don't think people are wrong to like speedrunning if that's what interests them) and extrapolate it to online dating....

Yeah, online dating/apps feels like speedrunning romance. The "question game" commonly used to get to "know" people doesn't feel fun, it feels like a test or a checklist. It feels disingenuous. Who I am when I answer now is unlikely to be entirely who I become months from now. Getting to know people in real life, as friends, you're generally not bombarding each other in order to grasp a perfect map of who they are when you met them. You learn about each other as pieces come up. That's how relationships, imo, work, that's the point of them. If I told myself of 8 or 9 years ago the things I do with and feel about the friends I met through Tumblr, it's not that I wouldn't believe myself. It's that past me wouldn't jump to doing what I do *now* with those people just because she knew that's where our relationships would end up. They weren't there yet and that was *good*. That was the point of where they were, we were, I was, then. Now it's grown and so have we.

Dating apps/app culture skip the process when, for me, the process is the point.

I'm a 160k slow burn, baby. You gotta *earn* it.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

As far as Call of the Wild goes, they have 100% successfully made this film before. With real dogs.

The first version was actually a 1923 silent film.

The 1935 version even starred darling of the screen Clark Gable. (Who, interestingly, was also the widower of the first female American casualty of WWII, Carole Lombard.)

Call of the Wild was adapted again in 1972, starring the man who made 4 year old me have a crush on Moses, Charlton Heston.

The next two adaptations were animated films, the 1978 Snoopy special What A Nightmare, Charlie Brown! and the 1981 film Call of the Wild: Howl Buck, which included Bryan Cranston (yes that Bryan Cranston) in the cast.

The next adaptation in 1997 was The Call of the Wild: Dog of the Yukon starring Rutger Hauer (hello other cinema crush, thanks Ladyhawk) and was narrated by Richard Dreyfuss, and was reviewed as one of the most faithful adaptations.

So really, Hollywood’s got a nice long history of fabulous leading men starring in Call of the Wild and using several real dogs to play Buck. I’m not suggesting we shit on mocap as a tool of the industry. It’s an incredibly useful tool, BUT I think it’s worth noting that in response to the overabundance of (sometimes, often, depending on your opinion) overuse of CGI rendering of animals (mocap or not) there’s been audience distaste for its prolific use. If it’s done well, it’s seamless. If it’s not done well, it has the tendency (in my experience) to hurt the ability of the audience to immerse themselves in a film. Just look at the reactions to The Lion King and Cats.

I think defending mocap to the detriment of using animals suggests that, well, that animal actors and their handlers and trainers don’t work hard and don’t take skill, on the parts of both the humans and the animals (to learn, to be trained) involved.

Idk, I think both mocap AND animal actors have their place and I think there’s a lot left for both tools to offer unique use and techniques to the film and television industry.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

I will say this. For the end(ish) of a rough week being sick and working every night, and just....life in general these past couple of years....

I have never felt more myself than I did just now finishing reading Still-Star Crossed, a sobbing mess, a good 2+ hours after I should have gone to bed.

Man, it’s good to be back. (says my bookworm self)

(It also drove me to go google the book names for the first Shakespeare retellings I first fell in love with in middle school, by Lisa Fiedler. Dating Hamlet and Romeo’s Ex: Rosaline’s Story. Which, incidentally, also ships her with Benvolio. lol)

[justabrowncoatedwench]

Percival Percivalstein is NOT the name Percy would give his son.

It IS the name that Vax or Grog or Scanlan, or all three combined, would give his son while Percy is somehow incapacitated or entirely not present during his son’s birth.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

Sometimes I think about the fact that if you think about recruiting Loghain, Alistair says “joining the Wardens is an honor, not a punishment” because.....

Duncan was an 18 year old serial thief, pickpocket, and (single) murderer when he got recruited to the Wardens (by the woman engaged to the man he murdered; she was hoping the Joining would kill him)....

Brosca and Tabris are recruited after a string of downright crime and murder....

Amell/Surana too, while possibly doing it on their mentor’s orders, are recruited after aiding and abetting a blood mage....

It’s a 50/50 shot whether or not Aeducan did side with Bhelen and kill their eldest brother, or if they were framed, but they could have been a murderer too, a kin-killer even.....

Plus, one of the other two recruits at Ostagar is a thief from Denerim....

I don’t know where you’re getting these high faluting ideas, Alistair, but they’re patently untrue, considering that the Wardens have a long history of being used as a punishment, or as a second chance at redemption against the darkspawn (ala the Legion).

[justabrowncoatedwench]

If I were writing my big piece with one of my Wardens for whom Conscription was and is and felt like a punishment - despite all of the good things being a Warden has brought them - I’d definitely be interested in having an actual conversation between said Wardens and Alistair about the reality that being and becoming a Grey Warden is not, in fact, an honor to every Warden. And that feeling that way is no less valid than feeling honored, and that there should be no negative judgement towards Wardens who feel punished by the Joining from those who feel honored by it.

Especially because one of my Wardens who feels punished by her Conscription is my Amell, who romanced Alistair and kept him a Warden with her. Because let me just say that I can’t picture “[it’s] an honor, not a punishment” going down well between a romanced Alistair and the woman he loves who feels punished by it. Mainly because she will feel some level of judgement and invalidation inherent in the statement.

So that’d be really interesting to get to explore in text, even just in a short story. But I don’t believe Solona had Riordan give the spiel about recruiting Loghain, where the statement in question occurs, so I’m not sure where else that might come up from Alistair to her.

With Kalliana, it could’ve come up in camp at some point, perhaps. But y’know. He also turns his back on his best friend to become a drunk and leave her one man down to fight the Archdemon SO I don’t know that she’d be very inclined to have that conversation with him after the natural place it crops up in the game.

(There’s also a looong complicated history with Kalli and Alistair, because he totally misread her warming up to him and being nice as flirting and then offered her the rose in Redcliffe before they’d even saved anyone, done anything major - aka VERY early in the game - and she turned him down, and that sucked for a while, but they became closer again, as friends, and just....yeah, there’d be a whole tangle of baggage in that pairing for this conversation if I wanted to go there with them.)

[justabrowncoatedwench]

If a humanoid race has pointed or elongated ears, I guarantee you they physiologically are no different in their mobility from real life human ears.

[justabrowncoatedwench]

I will never stop hating the phenomenon of people headcanon-ing that elves’ ears move to reflect their emotions like an animal’s. Especially Dragon Age elves.

Stop it.

There’s no basis for it either in canon OR in factual physiology (the auricular muscles for humans and therefore humanoids are not positioned in a way to move the cartilage of the ear and they’re not big enough OR strong enough to do so to the degree that people headcanon).

Furthermore, at least in my opinion, it’s incredibly dehumanizing.

P.S. For proof, a diagram of the paper thin auricular muscles humans have.