#Loghain has nukes’

[ranger-danger]

Fallouts your dragon age

[breaking-circles]

[Image Description: Marian Churchland's Dragon Age OC template filled out with Quin Brosca, a dwarf commoner warden. Quin is shown from the armpits up, leaning in towards the viewer, arms partially forward, while she looks to her right and smiles with her brow partially furrowed. She is wearing faded-looking leather armor with metallic shoulder guards. Her red hair is partially braided back and grows slightly darker in her bushy eyebrows, thin beard, and mustache. She has a casteless brand on her right cheek, in addition to geometric tattoos on her left cheek and above her left eyebrow. Her open smile shows a missing tooth. She has two small scars on her chin to the left of her mouth. In the background, four daggers fan out pointed toward her, and the words "Can I get you a ladder?" appear next to her. Below the drawing, several traits are listed with a line between them to mark where the character falls between the two. Between cautious and reckless, Quin is very reckless; between selfless and self-serving, she is more selfless; between emotion-driven and logic-driven, she is extremely emotion-driven; between forthright and dissembling, she is more dissembling; between friendly and unfriendly, she is slightly more friendly than not; between devout and questioning she is devout; and between trusting and suspicious she is suspicious. Below the traits is a list of her main party: Alistair, Dog, Wynne, and Leliana. Below that, there are a series of symbols that indicate which choices she made throughout the game. The first three indicate she is a dual-wielding rogue, a dwarf commoner, and romanced Alistair. The next row of five indicates she saved the circle, brokered peace between the werewolves and Dalish, destroyed the anvil and elected Bhelen, made Anora the sole leader of Ferelden and executed Loghain, and had Alistair do the dark ritual with Morrigan, thus ensuring they both lived. End of Image Description]

I'm replaying the Dragon Age series (to the dismay of my professors, I assume) which means redoing the art I made back in 2019. First up is my girl Quin, light of my life, bi butch icon who fr deserves the world. Nobody helped her family when they needed it most so she's made it her goal to help as many people as possible. Through extreme violence. I'll post my Hawke and Inquisitor next (I've actually already done my Inquisitor but I wanna post them in game release order), so be on the lookout for that :>

Here's a bonus flat version~

[Image Description: The same drawing as in the first image, though this time without the background or shading, making the colors easier to pick out. End Description.]

I'll put some relevant stuff in the replies, hopefully, that doesn't get the post nuked. I swear I've been here 10 years nearly and I've got no idea how this works.

[champion-of-thedas]

Another wheel of time post that is not a wheel of time book club post:

So once again my brain has caught the fanfiction bug while I’m trying to write other stories because screw me.

As I’ve been rereading the books and reading some fanfiction, I’ve thought more and more about writing my own time travel fanfic characters by close to the end of the series are sent back to try and fix something. After all, the series does have alternate worlds woven into the narrative so why not?

Honestly I’m just thinking of someone being forced to go back in time because a) Rand destroys the world and they need to prevent that from happening or b) they stumble on a world where there was no dragon because Tam was killed during the battle on dragonmount and Rand died. Basically just older characters suddenly having the responsibility of training and guiding and/or raising the fantasy equivalent of a nuke with knowledge of how it could go.

I have absolutely no clue which one I want OR who I want to send back in time (just not rand), so I figured I’d see if anyone has any suggestions.

As far as who I’d like to send back, I’ve got: Moiraine, Lan, Nyneave, Egwene, one of the Far Dareis Mar, Perrin, Mat, Loghain, Mazrim, Asmodean, and/or Moridin. (Look Mazrim and Moridin being forced to raise the dragon for whatever reason would be hilarious. I’d include demandred if I didn’t think he would kill Rand outright no matter the consequences to himself. Moridin only gets included because if he’s there any time Rand dies he’ll have to start over for whatever asinine reason I pick. Demandred is just spiteful enough to do that regardless)

I’m not including Aviendha, Elayne, and Min for obvious reasons (both romantic interest and I think it would actually be really easy for Min to do this right thanks to her emotional intelligence and powers). I think this could go from potentially hilarious to super depressing very easily but I’m gonna do it at some point, probably once the reread is done. I’m just trying to go past spark of amusement to an actual idea. I also may remove Nyneave from the list purely for half of the reason I kept Min off the list: she would be too good at it.

[crossdressingdeath]

#yeah... they haven’t really solved the problem the best though imo#in accounting for all these problems their solution so far seems to be to reduce the number of large OR small player choices#and keep player choices from the past from appearing a whole ton if at all#and we don’t need to be reminded of every single option you can take in regards to a mercs life in origins#but it does kind of feel like inquisition has it a lot weaker than 2 or origins#although there is some cool stuff#Morrison’s kids dad will be different and she’ll mention it to him and leliana will talk about her relationship to the warden#Conner will be in redcliffe if he’s still alive and obvi alistair shows up one way or another#there’s even a quest involving fucking worthy from da2#but idk it felt more... like something was definitely going to happen whether you liked it or not and all the say you had in it was -#the level of sarcasm you displayed#maybe it’s because I hate corypheus as a villain I think he sucks and that things involving him suck#and unfortunately that is the whole main story (tags via @its-cullenminating)

The trouble with Corypheus is that I got the sense that they were trying to copy what they did with the Archdemon in DAO without recognizing that the Archdemon only worked because Loghain and Howe were the villains carrying the story up to the endgame. Corypheus doesn't feel enough like a person to carry the story the way the villains of the previous games did; Samson and Calpernia aren't really active enough to cover for him, we're not even supposed to see Mythal as a villain during the section where she's a major player, and Solas doesn't reveal himself until the credits, so DAI is left without a strong overarching villain like Loghain or Meredith to keep things moving.

And DAI is definitely where we're starting to see the main weakness of this series's branching paths beginning to hit home. I mean, I'm pretty sure half the reason for the Conclave exploding is that previous player choices would lead to world states so wildly different that it would be hard to write the mage rebellion in a way that fits all of them (a world state where both the Warden and Hawke are firmly pro-mage will have a very different rebellion than one where they're both pro-Templar, as an example). I suspect (or at least hope) that that's why both the Circles and the College of Enchanters exist at the end of the game no matter who becomes Divine; Bioware is trying to create a situation where all world states are similar enough that they don't have to nuke the whole situation to make it work. Which does limit the impact player choices have, but that's a necessary evil. And I definitely agree that DAI feels very much like things are just happening with you occasionally commenting on it. I think that largely comes from you being shoved into the position of Inquisitor and constantly badgered about doing things that'll benefit the Chantry... even if you don't want to and/or it makes no sense for your character. I hope that in DA4 we'll go back to being Just Some Guy who happens to be in the right place at the right time; DAI gives the player way too much power over the setting and then doesn't let you do anything with it, which leaves me at least feeling like things are entirely out of my hands in a game where my choices are supposed to matter.

Continued HLtA thoughts: Stroud is so obviously a placeholder option that it's not even funny. I mean, Stroud? The guy Hawke interacts with for like ten minutes total tops across all of DA2? The Inquisitor has no reason to care about Stroud and the player has no reason to care about Stroud! ...Well, the Inquisitor has no particular reason to care about Loghain or Alistair either beyond the vaguest "veteran of the Fifth Blight helped save the world" sort of caring. But the player may well care about Loghain! The player almost certainly cares about Alistair (as long as they played Origins)! Choosing between Alistair and Hawke is hard! Leaving Loghain to die does provoke a small twinge of grief for me! But Stroud? He's just... a guy. If Stroud is your Warden ally it really weakens the impact of the whole quest, because neither you nor your character have any personal reason to care about whether this man lives or dies. The overall weakness of the sacrifice in-universe is somewhat covered up with Alistair and Loghain by the fact that the player has an attachment to those characters, but Stroud? With Stroud it really drives home that the Inquisitor has no reason not to save Hawke.