#alternatively I am a dragon

[pineapple-cheese-bread]

Man I really looked at the options for Gender and Sexuality and just said no❤️

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

more of the dapper lad! i Cannot get him out of my brain

[mothsandbees]

Josie doodle bc I can't remember how to draw atm

[honeymilkbubbletea]

Hey @saturnniidae come here, your X Men AU is ready~

He knows what she is (a homosexual 😔)

[bellarashallaplush]

Okay so I read a spoilery post wrong earlier and for a good half an hour there I thought that if you didn't romance Emmerich in your playthrough he goes out with Spite. The Demon In Lucanis.

I looked it up because I wanted to find Details because that's Hilarious and Juicy and I wanted to know more.

Turns out, no, he goes out with Strife, the very cool Veil Jumper guy.

And like no Shade to Strife. Love that guy. But damn I will be mourning that world that never existed where the old man falls fast and hard for the Spite Demon and the Demon reciprocates.

[zuppizup]

The way dark magic can use parts of a sapient being without their knowledge or consent. The way Claudia could track down Rayla with a piece of her hair and Rayla didn’t even realise that was what was happening, how she thought the lights were cute and tickled…

The way it reminds me of those “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” type arguments when it comes to the surveillance state. How parts of you (your data, your DNA) can be stored away until it is useful to those who might want to control you.

All to say, I am having the most fun with my dark magic AU.

[noheteroexplanation]

Kind of wild to think about how House of the Dragon could have turned out so differently if the casting director had made different choices. Because from interviews with the cast, we know Olivia auditioned for the role of Rhaenyra, Sonoya auditioned for Alicent and Phia auditioned for young Rhaenyra. Just interesting to think about really <3

[ria-starstruck]

heheee funney pk and radiance interaction from drawpile with @foileadeux !!

[nostalgia-tblr]

oh yeah when the fuck did alicent have an extra son? how many kids are there??

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

This week on "CJ needs to gush about DAO": Morrigan's dark ritual.

I adore Origins because depending on how serious you take roleplay, every decision you make is a thread that leads back to your origin, and in this case of the ritual, who you choose to romance can have a major impact on how you handle this choice.

For context, my canon run is with a female Tabris who romances Alistair and keeps him as a Grey Warden, and is close friends with Morrigan. It's more in character for my Tabris to reject Morrigan's ritual and not even bring it up to Alistair, which would result in her leaving him behind while she makes the ultimate sacrifice in killing the archdemon... however, agreeing to convince Alistair to do the ritual with Morrigan is the only choice in the entire game where I break roleplay because I'm selfish and weak and I want Tabris to live.

I have a lot of strong feelings about the ritual, like it hurts me. It makes me want to chew on furniture. I can talk about it until I can talk no more. I so badly want to be strong enough to remain in character and reject the ritual.

Let me explain: Tabris survives an origin that deals with sexual assault. She gets kidnapped on her wedding day, she watches the other kidnapped women and her husband get murdered, and then is too late to save Shianni from being assaulted... and Tabris carries that trauma with her throughout the entire game.

If the way to save her life is to ask the two most important people she cares about; one being her lover and the other being her best friend; who she knows hate each other, to have dubiously consensual sex in order to make a baby to absorb the old god soul... she's saying no. The last thing Tabris would ever do is put someone into a sexual situation where consent is at all dubious after what she saw happen to Shianni and nearly happened to herself. She'd rather die than force that upon Alistair and Morrigan.

That's what I mean when I say origin affects everything; I know some will side eye that with "Really? Your warden would rather die than let Alistair sleep with another woman? It's one time, and Alistair agrees to it, so no one needs to die?"

Let me be clear in saying this isn't a "Morrigan slept with my man" issue. Sure, that part's awkward and it sucks, but that's not even breaking water tension, let alone diving into the deep waters to the core of the issue.

For my Tabris, this is about betrayal, consent, and accepting fate.

The person offering Tabris this deal is someone she thought of as a trusted friend who has actually been lying to her the entire time. It doesn't matter what Morrigan's intentions are now or if she genuinely wants to save the wardens. She knew from the beginning why Flemeth sent her with them, she admits as much. She knew a warden would need to make the ultimate sacrifice and then leveraged that to get what she wants. Morrigan waited until the night before, when Alistair and the warden learn one of them has to die to defeat the archdemon, and took advantage of the high running emotions and possibly the fear of dying to make the warden agree to her ritual.

At least, that's how my Tabris interprets this confrontation. She feels betrayed by someone she came to love like a sister and went out of her way to help Morrigan with her mother upon learning what's in Flemeth's grimoire. And then that someone tells her no one needs to die, she just needs to convince Alistair to sleep with her... which is a huge fucking problem.

The Alistair and Tabris romance is slow; it took a long time for either of them to be comfortable with being emotionally vulnerable and trusting each other with basic intimacy, let alone sex. Tabris is mortified at the idea of putting Alistair in this situation. Not only would it feel like a betrayal on her part to ask that of him, but she knows the last thing Alistair ever wants to do is father a bastard who then goes on to grow up without him. How could she possibly ask him to do that?

Then you consider that ritual or no, there isn't a guarantee that they'll survive anyway. Say they do the ritual and Tabris dies anyway; she made Alistair sleep with Morrigan in order to save her and then she died anyway. Or if Alistair dies then Tabris gets to live with the fact that the last person Alistair was with was a woman he hates because she asked that of him… and either way, Morrigan gets to walk away with what she wanted.

Tabris led the group, and she's accepted that if Riordan dies [which he does] then she'll be the one to make the sacrifice, even if it means breaking both hers and Alistair's heart.... except she doesn't because I'm a coward who doesn't want to lose her because my worldstate isn't good without her in it but I also refuse to lose Alistair so I just pretend it plays out differently in my head it's fine-

But... that's how I play Tabris and view the situation. My friend @pi-creates and I have discussed the dark ritual at length. While I play a Tabris who romances Alistair, Pi plays a Mahariel who romances Morrigan, so we have vastly different interpretations of the ritual itself and Morrigan's intentions.

Which yeah, it makes total sense that someone who romanced Morrigan with a different origin, and has the option to do the ritual with her rather than asking someone else to do it, wouldn't see this the way I do.

To quote Pi: "Playing as a male warden in the Morrigan romance makes the whole situation feel different, and maybe it’s because she’s presenting it differently due to the emotional connection, but it feels more like she’s opening up about her initial instructions (that she had been given by Flemeth) and offering a solution to avoid the possibility of death. And for my Mahariel, the constant threat of sudden death has haunted him from the start – he caught the blight and was ripped away from his clan (something he did not want to do in the slightest), got forced into a Grey Warden ritual that could kill him, was forced into a battle that could kill him, going on this whole quest that he never wanted but has now become responsible for regardless of his thoughts on the matter… the dark ritual may be one of the few moments where he is presented with an option to decide if he wants to walk into certain death, or take actions of his own volition to stop it.

"The idea of the ritual still feels like a dodgy thing to do since the ultimate outcome is unknown at that point, he’s taking Morrigan at her word that it will save the warden and that this child would be unharmed, just with an old god soul that she isn’t exactly clear on why she wants that and is determined to runaway immediately after the battle to secure it properly. It could be interpreted that it’s purely a preservation thing, but I’m biased to wanting Morrigan's intentions to not be power based.

"But also, taking part in the ritual isn’t as outlandish for my warden since he and Morrigan have already been involved in an intimate relationship. It’s the future of the ritual that is scarier – the idea of this old-god baby, and the idea of Morrigan insisting that she’s leaving afterwards when Mahariel and her have a loving relationship. He’s hurting, but he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want Alistair to die, he doesn’t want Morrigan to leave, he definitely doesn’t want pregnant Morrigan to leave on her own… it’s complicated, but for completely different reasons."

And I find that fascinating. I want to know how other players approach this part of DAO, what origins they play, and who they romanced. Seriously, this is an invitation to anyone reading to share their thoughts.

What about a warden who doesn't even have Alistair in their party because they made Loghain a warden? Is there anyone out there who has Loghain do the ritual with Morrigan and why? What about male wardens who don't romance her? Do you choose to do it with her anyway, or do you ask Alistair or Loghain to do it? Do you tell Morrigan to fuck off with the ritual? Why? Who makes the ultimate sacrifice in that case? And what about Morrigan herself? How do you interpret her intentions/motivations? I want to know.

I'm telling you, this is a discussion that gets me excited, as most discussions about DAO do.

[dungeons-and-dragon-age]

HHHHHH

RENAN DID IT

BUT

WHAT THE FUCK

YOU CANT DO THIS TO ME

[mfdragon]

Does the "MF" in ur username mean Mother Fucking

Is ur name Mother Fucking Dragon?

Yes.

[gayturians]

i say this as a known solas hater and an avid varric enjoyer. if they had him walk up those steps to talk solas down and solas killed him right there on the spot and they showed us that in the gameplay reveal.... i would have deleted every da4 critical post on my blog and sent bioware $60 as a pre-pre-order

[ofwolvesandshatteredshields]

me: let's see what the spell list looks like for this enemy my level 6 party might run into next meeting :)

spell list: Finger Of Death

me: (: let's make some adjustments

[honeymilkbubbletea]

10 likes and I'm drawing Hiccup from my runaway AU like this

[wrathful-reptile]

i have hatched many an egg and many a double

but alas, nary a triple to grace my lair