#and its been so long since dragon age... so long....

[fanficmaniatic]

Love every single word in this post, and I feel you. If I could see the timeline the show writers were working with I would be a happy man. But Alas.... I don't think they had one. And for my own sanity, this are the explanations I've come up with + the timeline I use so that I don't rip my head when trying to write fics.

The Skales junior situation:

First, I feel like we need to consider the species. He is a snake. Cobra serpentine, which I believe is the species the hypnobrai are based on, are an egg-laying species of snakes. Now, unlike humans, when a snake hatches from an egg, they had already figure out simple things that takes us humans months. Things like; not choking on our food, walking and most motor functions. A baby snake could hypothetically survive own its own if its incubation was without issue, a human baby could not.

Where am I going with this? Skales Junior's egg could have been laid when they where in the thumbs, but hatched during the s2->s3 time skip. In real life, a snake eggs takes 2 to 3 months to hatch. Since in Ninjago Serpertine are a highly intelligent sentient species, lets say one of their eggs takes 2 to 3 years to hatch. When the kid actually hatches they would be no different than a 2-3 year old human toddler who is struggling to learn their words but has already figure out how to walk.

With this being said, I think maybe, Junior could have hatched 8-10 months before we saw him in s3, making him the equivalent of a toddler ages 3-5ish, and then he is just and older kid in s7. (also as a side note, WHEN in s7 does he appear again, I do NOT remember).

In rewards of s2->s3 time skip being shorter than s3->s4 all I have to say is... Tommy Andreasen, you, me, the nearest Waffle House. Catch these hands. <- As it is obligatory on the internet, that is a joke.

Now for Spitz and the Finders:

I feel that is way more likely Spitz egg is what got lost and not Spitz herself. Her egg could have been lost, forgotten about, hatched while in the Land of Lost Things, and has been under Geo's care ever since. She could have been 4-5 when the Merge happened/ Cole arrived, and be 9-10 now.

The "But we are teenagers" Kai dialog from s9: To be fair, as a guy in his early 20s who feels like a teenager, and is surrounded by a bunch of early 20s guys who also feel like teenagers... I just though that was the case here with Kai too. Meaning, they are young adults, early 20s, but being as their life is this Ninja business, no taxes, no worrying about mortgage, 'waiting to see what life throws at you' mentality, he just says they are teenagers.

There are so many "Grown" Things happening in the Oni trilogy that I just can't see Kai saying that and being serious. Nya (Kai's younger sister) gets engaged, Cole is considering adopting a baby, the overall more mature tone of the season. AND more importantly and why I don't think the og4 and Nya are teenagers this season (I place them to be 20-23 with Lloyd being 16), is that they actually perform like experienced Ninja in a way they just were not in seasons 4-7. Nothing against those seasons, I love s4-s7, but the Oni trilogy really shines when showcasing the team doing Ninja stuff.

And now, the timeline I use to not rip my hair. Let it be known that it according to it, 17 years have passed from the pilot to Dragons Risings s1, and that feels wrong to me. it feels too short, but to add more years feels too long, so anyways:

TIMELINE: 1st year + half - Pilot - S1 - S2 (One year gap) 3rd year: -S3 (6 month gap) 4th Year -S4 (3 month gap) -S5 -Skybound 5th year - DotD - S7 (One year gap) 7th year - S8 - S9 (6 months gap) Same year -s10 (6 months gap) 8th year -s11 -s12 -s13 (2/4 month Gap) 9th year -The Island (2 month gap) -s14/ Seabound 10th year -s15/ Crystalized (1 year gap) 11th Year -The Merge (6 year gap) 17th year -s16/ Dragons Rising s1

It was said that the Og4 where 14-20 during the pilots, I like to throw Nya there too, since she is paired with both Jay and Cole, this would make the Og4 + Nya somewhere between 31-37 In Dragons Rising s1.

Its safe to assume Lloyd is somewhere between 8-13 in s1, making him 25-30 in DRs1. Depending of y'alls headcannons.

Did not intent to ramble for that long. Sorry. But I hope that at the very least someone like me can rest in piece with this fuckass timeline. love yall.

[elbiotipo]

I think ASOIAF is doing some neat things regarding the "millennia of history" thing - it's actually implied that most stories about events dating to that long ago have been "reskinned" for modern audiences, applying their current mores and sociopolitical conditions. I seem to remember specifically that the so-called "knights" dating back to that time are actually not knights at all, since that concept only came with the Andals millennia after they lived. It's also implied that a lot of technological progress occurred since then, with the people of that time notably using bronze weapons. ...which is why when fans claim that ASOIAF is an example of medieval stasis I cannot help but disagree - it's only stasis if you disregard all the hints (bronze and knights being the largest) of technological and social changes! Also, while Westeros has been somewhat stagnant in terms of technology in the last centuries (presumably due to how instruction works in their kingdom, with the Citadel as pretty much the only place where higher learning occurs), Essos and the free cities are more advanced, such as lens glassworking in Myr (making spyglasses and telescopes). ...basically the semblance of medieval stasis only works if you restrict yourself to Westeros (which funnily enough is kind of the backwater of the world and full of quirky barbarians in the eyes of the free cities) and if you do not look deeper into its history (though most fans do exactly this lol).

Another thing that's interesting about ASOIAF is that the more you go into the past, the more mythical things become - with pseudo-elves (the Children of the forest and the icy Others), giants, magic being used to rupture continents and create curses, and of course the big fire breathing dragons and the empire that created and controlled them through blood magic. However by the time the story occurs, their time is long gone, fading away into myth - and we get the "realistic fantasy" GRRM was talking about. I think that the absurdly inflated timescale for its history (especially the baffling 8000 year reign of the Starks) makes sense if you consider that the past was an age of myths, working by its own rules (and/or that history is distorted in the telling - maybe some kings called starks did rule that long ago, but who can say if their kingship is anything like we intend it today, or if those who call themselves stark today are actually their direct descendants? ).

Though of course, magic is coming back in Westeros, making for a delicious contrast between those long-forgotten myths and the "realistic" mortal backstabbing and wars. Which is rather the point of ASOIAF imo.

...sorry for the rambling!! I simply love your world building posts and they made me think about how ASOIAF handles time and change...

WELL when you put it like THAT it does make a lot of sense. I will admit that I'm not the biggest fan of ASOIAF (neither the story or themes caught me) but there are some things that Jorge did well. The idea of a more "mundane", gritty era after the decay of magic has very interesting mythological parallels, the idea of its return is also good too.

I don't think however, this depth, at least when compared to the numbers given, is really reflected in the story or the aesthetics. Again, I'm not really a big fan but I would love to see more in depth changes, more references to these profound technological and social changes that must have happened.

In fact, I could easily buy the regions of Westeros as ancient with their own unique cultures and more. But like some others have said, rather than a full continent, Westeros is basically a giant version of England.

I am more harsh on GRRM because he became the face of "realistic" gritty fantasy for a while, and not only this fails in the attitudes of his characters but also his worldbuilding. If he's going to complain that other authors don't get economics or attitudes of the past, then maybe he should have thought of the basic geography of his continent first. But then again, actual fans, such as above, have explored this better than me.

[ruvvik]

alright fuck it you guys have convinced me I'm going to play bg3

[dreamyblanket]

Imagine sheep (idk lol) y/n dragon meeting longan I bet longan would be wondering "how come the dragon kind has been reduced into this... so cute and floofy?!!"

I do a whole bunch of rambling in the tags for this one ^^u But! Dragon y/n would ask them so many questions about the time when dragons were common!

[oddlyenna]

Emmrich and my Rook, Carnation. (Custom outfit, for funsies.)

[birb--birb]

*gnawing on the bars of my enclosure aaaahhhfjffnfk* I did a trade with another artist friend I met at my last market and they're doing an emmrook commission for me with Savrin picking Emmy up and like spinning him in excitement and the draft is SO fucking cute I CAAANNNT DEAL

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

found a vitaar to disguise the cc's blush crimes 😤 anyway this is the first time i'm playing DAI on an actually high quality laptop (first was xbox 360 which was poor graphics/didn't even bother rendering extras on the landscape, then my workhorse but cheapish gaming laptop i used for 10 entire years and which was wheezing its last breaths). did you know there's FLOWERS everywhere in the hinterlands?? not for me before! also, if you dick around long enough, Solas makes a pointed comment like "Shouldn't we be heading to Val Royeaux now to close the breach???" which i assume was dialogue patched in after release when everyone got stuck in the hinterlands for 10 hours. hush Solas im trying to fuck up the local ram population.

[drownedkiwi]

It's begun...........feat Assan mention

[eosphours]

finished the veilguard and wow the emptiness i feel rn is crushing my soul

i need at least a year to get over it, and another year to get over emmrich and his romance

[jalopeura]

all im saying is

if veilguards story is "trying to stop the 'bad guy' from destroying this world/civilization to bring back his ancient world/civilization"

they got a real high bar to meet

for people whove played shadowbringers

[pupkinpumpkin]

On the one hand, I want to romance every companion in Veilguard sooooo bad

On the other hand, I have completionist blood, which means I need to get all the chests, get all the candlehops, do all the sidequests, listen to all the dialogue, and get as many clothes and little codex entries as I can

And I don't think I have that much energy in me

[wayward-rosalind]

Man y'all. I finished Dragon Age Veilguard last night (unfortunate timing yes but this isn't about that) and... Wow actually three. That game had teeth let me tell you (SPOILERS UNDER RM DO NOT)

Okay so like you get to basically choose two party members to be removed from you party select for the rest of the game. The first one is getting Harding of Davern to lead a distraction party. I was like oh Harding did this in Inquisition! SHE FUCKING DIES AT THE END OF THE QUEST. Same with Davern if you chose him. It's just something that I wasn't expecting. But that's not the one I am here for.

There's also Bellara and Neve. The choice presented like as of one of them was correct. I chose Bellera to unravel wards because elven gods. She's a Veil jumper like that's her wheelhouse. I thought it was odd that I got hit with Neve disapproval. Then I got to witness Bellara suddenly getting snatched away from me. It was just so sudden. Then bye. The game considers her as dead as your distraction party leader.

Oh yeah she was who my Rook Romanced. So that was an insane amount of angst and it does turn out she's fine (strong word since she's so blighted her eyes are glowing red.) but seeing how relieved my Rook was, how even though Bellara will most likely die from the blight that she never gave up on seeing my Rook again. The unique dialogue for that interaction felt more intimate than the sex scene I would have gotten had I chosen Neve in this situation.

I do still have the save just before I made that choice. I kinda want to see all of her romance scenes. I'm really curious what a Neve romance in this same situation looks like. Just, wow. The details for act three is vast, and honestly I'm awaiting when more players that romanced one of those two get to experience it.

[odogarons]

"They left the fire burning." "Were they ambushed?"

[olberic]

so the first time i played the da games 9 years ago i just picked the romances based on who i as the player liked, and my characters had very little depth bc i was just playing to try and maximize approval for everyone. but this time around im letting my characters develop more. im picking dialogue options that result in disapproval bc my characters are sticking to their beliefs. it also means the romance stories come about based on who my character ends up getting along with. heads up for talking abt my characters, itd be under a readmore if i wasnt using an ancient version of the app lol

so my city elf warden, lev, picked zevran. she had a hard time trusting humans after what she’s been through in the alienage, and though she comes to see morrigan as her closest friend, she doesnt warm up enough to leliana or alistair to pursue their more serious romances. did have the threesome with isabela. when zevran has the choice of going back with the crows, she realizes she cant stand the thought of losing him.

this time around, my marian hawke ended up being down bad for aveline, which surprised me, tbh. just so put out when aveline liked donnic instead (but i DID get the kiss scene. heheh). she eventually ended up with isabela, though i interpret the specific events of their romance a little differently than that first main romance convo. my hawke also flirted with merrill a bit, and was definitely fond of her, but it never sparked. this particular hawke is also a lesbian even though my first playthrough had hawke as bi. her absolute best friend ended up being fenris.

im still working through inquisition so im not sure who teolin (dalish, and the keeper’s second, not first, thank you very much) is interested in. im playing him as bi, and flirted a lot with cassandra at first, but rn shes mad at him for being so pro-mage. otherwise thinks josephine is cute and has been enjoying flirting with dorian, but is very much an impulsive sort than what the dialogue options strictly let me choose. highest non-romance approvals are with varric and solas, and has been getting along well with leliana, as far as he can tell.

im also not as invested in the romance as a whole this time playing the games. as a teen it was really exciting to have romance options, so that stuck around in my memory of the games. this time its not as important to me. yes im making a post about it because it is a commonly discussed element of the games but its not my main thing with them this time.

im appreciating the other relationships a lot more. lev struggling with deep distrust for humans while learning to trust alistair as an ally, her respect for morrigan, her appreciation for oghren’s straightforwardness. hawke’s love for her mother and sister, her unconditional support for anders and the mage underground, her honest discussions with fenris as her best friend. and while i cant say much for teolin yet, as the player im really enjoying interpreting his approval levels based on his beliefs and how that makes others see him.

and when my warden struggled for half the game to drag alistair’s approval up, and my hawke stood her ground when defending apostates against people she cares deeply about, and teolin’s pride in being an elf and a mage means hes shooting down his “inner circle”, its still really satisfying to me. not everyone needs to be uncomplicated besties like i thought they had to be when i played it the first time. the games are so political and give you enough freedom of expression to stick to what you believe (for the most part), so why not embrace it?

[dunzobunzo]

replaying inquisition to get ready for the veilguard!

[onelastkiss4you]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard Just Went From A Good RPG To One Of BioWare’s Most Important Games

In light of BioWare scattering some of its most foundational veteran talent to the winds, Dragon Age: The Veilguard sure reads like something made by people who saw the writing on the wall. The RPG leaves off on a small cliffhanger that could launch players into a fifth game, but I’m skeptical that we’ll ever get it. The quickness with which publisher Electronic Arts gutted BioWare and masked it with talk of being more “agile” and “focused” shortly after it was revealed The Veilguard underperformed in the eyes of the power that be makes me wonder if BioWare was also unsure it would get to return to Thedas a fifth time. Looking back, I’m pretty convinced the team was working as if Rook’s adventure through the northern regions of this beloved fantasy world might be the last time anyone, BioWare or fan, stepped foot in it. But that may have only made me appreciate the game even more.

Yeah, I might be doomsaying, but there’s a lot of reasons to do so right now. The loss of talented people like lead writer Trick Weekes, who has been a staple in modern BioWare since the beginning of Mass Effect, or Mary Kirby who wrote characters like Varric, the biggest throughline through the Dragon Age series, doesn’t inspire confidence that EA understands the lifeblood of the studio it acquired in 2007. The Veilguard has been a divisive game for entirely legitimate reasons and the most bad-faith ones you can imagine on the internet in 2025, but my hope is that history will be kinder to it as time goes on. 

A Kotaku reader reached out to me after the news broke to ask if they should still play The Veilguard after everything that happened. My answer was that now we are probably in a better position to appreciate it for what it was: a (potentially) final word.

The Veilguard is just as much a send-off for a long-running story as it does a stepping stone for what (might) come. Its secret ending implies a new threat is lurking somewhere off in the distance but by and large, The Veilguard is about the end of an era. BioWare created an entire questline essentially writing Thedas’ history in stone, removing any ambiguity that gave life to over a decade of theory-crafting. As a long-time player, I’m glad The Veilguard solidifies the connective tissue between what sometimes felt like world of isolated cultures that lacked throughlines that made the world feel whole. But sitting your cast of weirdos down for a series of group therapy sessions unpacking the ramifications of some of the biggest lore dumps the studio has ever put to a Bluray disc isn’t the kind of narrative choice you make if you’re confident there’s still a future for the franchise. 

Unanswered questions are the foundation of sequels, and The Veilguard has an almost anxious need to stamp those out. Perhaps BioWare learned a hard lesson by leaving Dragon Age: Inquisition on a cliffhanger and didn’t want to repeat the same restriction. But The Veilguard doesn’t just wrap up its own story, it concludes several major threads dating back to Origins and feels calculated and deliberate. If BioWare’s goal with The Veilguard was to bring almost everything to a definitive end, the thematic note it leaves this world on acts as a closing graf summing up a thesis the series hopes to convey.

Pushing away the bigotry that has followed The Veilguard like a starving rat digging through trash, one of the most common criticisms I heard directed against the game was that it lacked a certain thorny disposition that was prevalent in the first three games. Everyone in the titular party generally seems to like each other, there aren’t real ethical and philosophical conflicts between the group, and the spats that do arise are more akin to the arguments you probably get into with your best friends. It’s a new dynamic for the series. The Veilguard doesn’t feel like coworkers as The Inquisition did or the disparate group who barely tolerated each other we followed in Dragon Age II. They are a friend group who, despite coming from different backgrounds, factions, and places, are pretty much on the same page about what the world should be. They’re united by a common goal, sure, but at the core of each of their lived experiences is a desire for the world to be better.

This rose-colored view of leftism doesn’t work for everyone. At its worst, The Veilguard can be saccharine to the point of giving you a cavity, which is far from what people have come to expect from a series in which Fenris and Anders didn’t care if the other lived or died. It also bleeds into a perceived softening of the universe. Factions like the Antivan Crows have essentially become the Bat Family with no mention of the whole child slavery thing that was our first introduction to them back in Origins. The Lords of Fortune, a new pirate faction, goes to great lengths to make sure you know that they’re not like the other pirates who steal from other cultures, among other things. I joked to a friend once that The Veilguard is a game terrified of getting canceled, and as such a lot of the grit and grime has been washed off for something shiny and polished. 

That is the more critical lens to view the way The Veilguard’s sanitation of Thedas. To an extent, I agree. We learned so much about how the enigmatic country of the Tevinter Imperium was a place built upon slavery and blood sacrifice, only for us to conveniently hang out in the common poverty-stricken areas that are affected by the corrupt politics we only hear about in sidequests and codex entries. But decisions like setting The Veilguard’s Tevinter stories in the slums of Dogtown gives the game and its writers a place to make a more definitive statement, rather than existing in the often frustrating centrism Dragon Age loved to tout for three games.

I have a lot of pain points I can shout out in the Dragon Age series, but I don’t think one has stuck in my craw the way the end of Anders rivalry relationship goes down in Dragon Age II. This is a tortured radical mage who is willing to give his life to fight for the freedom of those who have been born into a corrupt system led by the policing Templars. And yet, if you’ve followed his rivalry path, Anders will turn against the mages he, not five minutes ago, did some light terrorism trying to free. In Inquisition, this conflict of ideals and traditions comes to a head, but you’re able to essentially wipe it all under the rug as you absorb one faction or the other into your forces. So often Dragon Age treats its conflicts and worldviews as toys for the player to slam against one another, shaping the world as they see fit, and bending even the most fiercely devoted radical to your whims. And yes, there are some notable exceptions to this rule, but when it came to world-shifting moments of change, Dragon Age always seemed scared to assert that the player might be wrong. Mages and Templars, oppressed and oppressors, were the same in the eyes of the game, each worthy of the same level of scrutiny.

Before The Veilguard, I often felt Dragon Age didn’t actually believe in anything. Its characters did, but as a text, Dragon Age often felt so preoccupied with empowering the player’s decisions that it felt like Thedas would never actually get better, no matter how much you fought for it. While it may lack the same prickly dynamics and the grey morality that became synonymous with the series, The Veilguard’s doesn’t just believe that the world is full of greys and let you pick which shade you’re more comfortable with. It’s the most wholeheartedly the Dragon Age universe has declared that the world of Thedas can be better than it was before.

Essentially retconning the Antivan Crows to a family of superheroes is taking a hammer to the problem, whereas characters like Neve Gallus, a mage private eye with a duty-bound love for her city and its people, are the scalpel with which BioWare shifts its vision of how the world of Thedas can change. Taash explores their identity through the lens of Dragon Age’s longstanding Qunari culture, known for its rigidness in the face of an ever-changing world, and comes out the other end a new person, defined entirely by their own views and defying others. Harding finds out the truth behind how the dwarves were severed from magic and still remembers that she believes in the good in people. The heroes of The Veilguard have seen the corruption win out, and yet never stop believing that something greater is possible. It's not even an option in The Veilguard's eyes. The downtrodden will be protected, the oppressed will live proudly, and those who have been wronged will find new life.

That belief is what makes The Veilguard a frustrating RPG, to some. It’s so unyielding in its belief that Thedas and everyone who inhabits it can be better that it doesn’t really entertain you complicating the narrative. Rook can come from plenty of different backgrounds, make decisions that will affect thousands of people, but they can never really be an evil bastard. If they did, it would fundamentally undermine one of the game’s most pivotal moments. In the eleventh hour, Dragon Age mainstay Varric Tethras is revealed to have died in the opening hour, and essentially leaves all his hopes and dreams on the shoulders of Rook. After our hero is banished to the Fade and forced to confront their regrets in a mission gone south, Varric’s spirit sends Rook on their way to save the day one last time. He does so with a hearty chuckle, saying he doesn’t need to wish you good luck because “you already have everything you need.” He is, of course, referring to the friends you have calling to you from beyond the Fade. 

Varric, the narrator of Dragon Age, uses his final word to declare a belief that things will be okay. This isn’t because Rook is the chosen one destined to save the world, but because they have found people who are unified by one thing: a need to fight for a better world. But that’s what makes it compelling as a possibly final Dragon Age game. Reaching the end of a universe’s arc and being wholly uninterested in leaving it desecrated by hubris or prejudice is a bold claim on BioWare’s part. It takes some authorship away from the player, but in return, it leaves the world of Thedas in a better place than we found it.

The Veilguard is an idealistic game, but it’s one that BioWare has earned the right to make. Dragon Age’s legacy has been one of constantly shifting identity, at least two counts of development hell, and a desire to gives players a sandbox to roleplay in. Perhaps, as Dragon Age likely comes to a close, it’s better to leave Dragon Age with a game as optimistic as the people who made it. I can’t think of a more appropriate finale than one that represents the world its creators hope to see, even as the world we live in now gives us every reason to fall to despair.

In my review for The Veilguard I signed off expressing hope for BioWare’s future that feels a bit naive in retrospect. Would a divisive but undeniably polished RPG that felt true to the studio’s history be enough when, after 10 years of development, rich suits were probably looking for a decisive cultural moment? That optimism was just about a video game. Having lived through the past 32 years, most of the optimism I’ve ever held feels naive to look back on. I think I’m losing hope that the world will get any better. But even if we haven’t reached The Veilguard’s idealized vision, I’ll take some comfort in knowing someone previously at BioWare still believes it’s possible. - ken shepard, shepardcdr.bsky.social