#but if i made a THIRD aeducan who wants to kill him so bad <- i am dragged into the deep roads

[thedragonagelesbian]

I keep making aeducans who want to crawl on their hands and knees through broken glass back to bhelens side just for one single moment of recognition or understanding or familial acknowledgment, and it makes me sick every single time!!!

[theharellan]

dragon age positivity meme | accepting

i’m going to be answering these in one post for the sake of simplicity and cutting down ooc posts!

✾ your favourite da:o main quest | sent by @cuervocanto

my actual favourite quest is paragon of her kind, but i talked about why i love that one here. and yes, i don’t even rly mind the deep roads.

my second favourite is probably the landsmeet, especially taking into account that it has some sub-main quests that are grouped together under the umbrella of preparing for the landsmeet. such as resucing anora, breaking out of fort drakon, and solving the unrest in the alienage. i find returning to the alienage as tabris second to aeducan returning to orzammar, but it’s still very interesting coming back to a place where you grew up with no power, suddenly having power. and regardless of origin the worldbuilding is good, immediately the fact that you’re barred from the alienage upon initially entering denerim tells you a lot about the state of elves in ferelden. the choice at the end isn’t particularly difficult, “slavery is bad” isn’t a controversial opinion even in ferelden and so even the warden i created with the intention of being That Kind of Human couldn’t choose that option, BUT it does make for an emotional choice when playing tabris

as for rescuing anora and breaking out of drakon, i just love the humour in the quest. i never have my warden break out themselves just so i can have the companions bullshit their way in. my personal favourite combination is zevran and oghren, although i do enjoy morrigan-leliana and sten-dog, as well. i think my fave thing about oghren and zev tho is that iirc they’re one of the most successful combinations.

as for the landsmeet itself, it’s not particularly challenging, but i enjoy the variety of options you get and how it changes the game going forward. like, in every game anora is queen for me in some capacity, but beyond that i’ve had a bitter king alistair working with a warden who recruited loghain, loghain and the warden alone, etc. i enjoy the politicking and making an alliance with anora. it’s enjoyable even on replays.

❄ your favourite da:i personal quest | sent by @pentaghasted

my actual favourite personal quest is cole’s, which i talked about here. instead i’ll talk about iron bull’s b/c i’m glad they committed to what they started in trespasser and i also appreciate how the choice is set up. most of us save the chargers b/c the lot of them stole our hearts in the two scenes they were in, but unlike some other choices in the series choosing the sadder/arguably worse option doesn’t require you to be roleplaying as an evil bastard to choose it.

so like, most games i save the chargers, but my playthrough where i’m playing a practical trevelyan-- she goes with the qunari dreadnought. the chargers were assets, but a qunari alliance could have been more beneficial in the long term. heck, even my inquisitor who saves the chargers feels a lot of guilt about it-- because even if she didn’t know the people on the dreadnought, there were a whole lot of them, and her decision got them killed. she needed to show she cared for her own people first, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t matter.

which contrasts this personal quest for something like... say, fenris’s third one, which don’t get me wrong, is very emotional. but i cannot fathom why a hawke how kept fenris around for all that time and clearly spent time talking to him would just say “yeah you can take him” its just kinda over-the-top cruel. so i am glad when i can roleplay the alternate decisions i ordinarily wouldn’t make.

and i love seeing the quest’s differing effect on bull. he adjusts either way, but one puts him on a path where he’s going to be facing you, one way or another. and he pays the price for that.

♦ your favourite piece of lore | sent by @felandaristhorns & @sephirajo

i’ve answered this before the last time i reblogged this meme and answered the dalish mage lore from da:i and rivain just. as a whole. i’m going with the lore regarding elvhenan, though, b/c i think the games do a good job of subverting what we were told in da:o and da2 while also explaining how those misconceptions happened. i love going back to the previous games and seeing new angles to the lore and the places where they were building up to it. i love seeing the foreshadowing within inquisition itself.

and i just love how elvhenan is characterised, as a hyper-magic society where reality and dreams aren’t necessarily different things. and where feelings are just as physical as every other aspect of a person. it explains so much about the fade, spirits, solas, it makes even comments like merrill’s-- someone with a pretty nuanced view of spirits-- kind of sad. she calls the fade “another people’s land” not knowing that it was her land, and her people.

while i’m on that spirits in general make me sad. how perception screws with them, and how i think that just further isolates mages. for once i don’t think this is a plot by the chantry, i don’t think they’re lying about how they think spirits are, they’re just wrong to characterise them as they do. but at the same time i don’t think they’d disapprove of the effect is has on mages. it’s cutting them off from potential friendships, and not only that but friendships the templars would have 0 way of regulating given they could potential happen in dreams.

but i’m off-topic. the point is i find the worldbuilding surrounding elvhenan, to be some of bioware’s best. it makes sense, it’s nuanced and varied and doesn’t make elvhen characters wear one single hat. clearly it was a heavily flawed place, but it had a lot of merits and you can see why solas misses it or why cole, upon learning that the veil was never meant to be, feels validated by the idea that he was never wrong to want to be a part of both worlds.

♬ your favourite part of the da:i soundtrack | sent by @daggersandpoison

da:i has the best soundtrack in the series and i don’t think this is a controversial opinion. i do love inon sur’s work, and i was a little worried when i heard morris was composing inquisition b/c i found me3′s soundtrack to be overall a step down from me2′s (it lost a lot of what made the mass effect series unique). BUT with inquisition he managed to keep dragon age’s unique sound while also improving upon it. the inquisition theme gives me chills when i start up the game and even while i’m walking around in the field and a few chords play while i’m picking up my 100th elfroot.

but it’s always hard to choose my favourite. it’s honestly a tie between journey to skyhold and the dark solas theme. both of these give me specific solas feelings, the former b/c you have solas entrusting a lot of hope and faith in the inquisitor (it’s esp poignant if by that point you have a burgeoning friendship with him). and b/c it comes off one of the strongest moments in the dragon age series, aka the battle of haven and encounter w/ corypheus. also i love the dawn will come, fite me. and from my inquisitor’s perspective, esp my main inquisitor, thora, this is probably the first time she’s felt like she was worth all this herald talk. even if she doesn’t believe it, the song beginning with a soft, unsure sound and rising to a triumphant end when skyhold is unveiled encapsulates what i love about the inquisitor’s story and my inquisitor’s personal feelings.

dark solas theme i love b/c it conveys so much of the sadness and loneliness of his character. i would talk more about it b/c it makes me so sad i literally can’t listen to it unless i’m writing post-trespasser solas and even then it’s risky. it’s just a good track ok. and it caps off my favourite dlc.

ღ your favourite da:i banter | sent by @renaudtrevelyan

i talked about some banter i love here between bull and solas. i have to admit i have a hard time choosing my favourite in da:i b/c i just love so much of the banter in this game. i always tell myself not to choose solas banter, and i’m going to... choose one solas and one non-solas.

Solas: I do not understand you, Sera. You have no end goal for your organization. Sera: Nobles get rattled, and people get payback. I play in the middle. Solas: Why not go all the way? You see injustice, and you have organized a group to fight it. Don't you want to replace it with something better? Sera: What, just lop off the top? What's that do, except make a new top to frig it all up? Solas: I...forgive me. You are right. You are fine as you are. Sera: You hurt my head sometimes, Solas. Solas: Yes, I have been known to do that.

this banter is great to me (and all the banter leading up to it) b/c it informs so much about both of their characters. solas is trying to help sera, in this string of banter. he’s trying to give advice so that the red jennies could potentially become an organisation that does more than makes little people’s lives better with pranks or the occasional knife in someone’s back. it’s a conversation between two characters who are, in different ways, absolutely sick of the system and have different ways of dealing with it.

solas wants change. sweeping, societal change. sera isn’t sure change will help any, and would prefer the relative stability of a pre-breach world where she knows which way’s up. neither is wrong to deal with it the ways they are, and solas just has to look at the top he lopped off to see that, yes, they grow back just as bad. idk i just love solas and sera a lot and i love seeing what they have in common and how they handle their frustrations differently.

Sera: I don't get it. If you want to change, just change. Why this "fake Warden" rubbish? Blackwall: For one, people wanted me dead. Being someone else kept me breathing. Blackwall: And then, knowing that people thought I was good made it easier. Sera: (Laughs.) You needed them to think you could, so you could think you could! Sera: You're smart, but you're sort of stupid.

i’m picking another sera banter b/c i love her. i love sera b/c she’s smarter than ppl give her credit for, she cuts through why rainier did what he did the same way cole does. their relationship on the whole is very sweet and it was hard choosing one banter. but i appreciate her ability to both love and support thom while also calling him out on his bullshit. the two of them are good for each other and im so glad they’re friends. my only regret is i’ve never seen thom as sera’s best man in wedding art. or sera as blackwall’s for that matter. their friendship needs more love-- actually, sera just needs more love period.

☄ your favourite da:i codex entry | sent by @chantrysworn

i love this codex entry, describing wisdom (solas’s spirit friend):

When the summoning ritual was complete, the spirit appeared. Both spirits and demons have no gender as we understand it, but this one, much like the rare and dangerous desire demon, presented as female. Although its form was not threatening, the spirit carried itself with a confidence, an awareness, I suppose, that I have seen only in the most powerful of demons.

This spirit of wisdom was polite and courteous. It answered our questions about the Fade, even acknowledging the difficulty when we could not understand what it meant. There was none of the bargaining one normally associates with a summoned creature, save that the spirit sometimes asked us questions as well. Heras shared a mathematical formula he had recently proven, while Etrenne explained her study on magical themes in the Chant of Light, and young Rhys talked a little about his mother.

When we were finished, the spirit thanked us for the conversation and then vanished, although none of us had dismissed it. We soon discovered that the summoning ritual we had devised was critically flawed. The spirit had been under no compulsion to come or remain. All the time it had talked with us, it had stayed of its own volition. Heras was greatly concerned that such a powerful spirit remained free, and has updated the ritual to correct for the weakness in the binding enchantment. I understand his caution, but I also confess that I quite enjoyed the conversation. I am not certain the spirit would have talked so freely had it been shackled at the time.

—An excerpt from Spirits of the Spire by Senior Enchanter Francois

you can see so much of why they were friends in this codex. the politeness, answering and asking questions, no bargaining just a nice conversation where both parties learn things. and then you find out it never had to show up in the first place, it just wanted to-- and likely would not have been as accommodating had it not been free.

it’s great for informing us on a character we tragically don’t know all that well. and also? it’s incredibly sad when you think about what happens to it, it almost makes you wonder if the mages who ultimately bound and killed it would have had better luck simply asking for its protection. solas says something along those lines, but he also says it prefers remaining in the fade (interesting in itself, given that the chantry pushes the agenda that all spirits want beyond it. contradicted by multiple spirits we’ve met tbh, including cole, who actually quite likes the fade).

this codex is also interesting b/c it tells you some about what mages study and do with their time. and it goes back to what i mentioned previously, w/ chantry attitudes depriving spirits and mages of one another’s company.

anyway i love wisdom and it deserved better.

[breadedsinner]

For your main timeline. 8, 11, 14, 23.

8) What would your inquisitor and warden think of what happened in Kirkwall? Would they have supported Hawke’s decisions? 

Hoo boy, already starting with a tough one. It is really hard to remove my bias from this.

This gets kind of long.

Neither Hervor Aeducan nor Rota Cadash are big fans of the Chantry but they’re also both on the lawful side (Hervor being Lawful Good, Rota being Lawful Neutral) so blowing up a building is not really something either would approve of in general.

Hervor, of course, knew Anders, that makes things all the more complicated for her. While she was often irritated by him, she was heartbroken to discover he had abandoned the Wardens. That is what he did in her eyes, abandoned the cause. 

She would have preferred Judith Hawke send him back to the Wardens, even though some part of her knew he wouldn’t want to come back. Maybe he really would have rather died.

But she would say it’s not always about what we want. She would have told him he could have done good in the Wardens. That it didn’t have to be this way.

Rota, on the other hand, has a more grounded view on the magic situation. She doesn’t like templars but she’s fearful of magic and demons, and knows the short-terms effects will be negative for every party involved. She might have cracked a smile thinking at least it was in Hightown, it was probably mostly templars an nobles that were killed. But then there was the fact that the Grand Enchanter of the Kirkwall Circle was an elf, and that leaves a sour taste in Rota’s mouth. Poor sod, probably did his best to live by human’s rules, then some other human decides he didn’t do enough.

If she were wise to the fact that Anders merged with a spirit and was technically an abominations she would have said to Judy, “Fuck, I would have killed him on the spot,”.

If nothing else, she would admire that Judy was in a real bad spot, but assessed the situation as best she could, and carried on. That’s all you can expect someone to do. Keep in mind, Rota does talk to Judy about it, Hervor’s already made up her mind that there must have been some third option

11) Do your protagonists share the same opinions on mages rights?

Kind of? As dwarves, Hervor and Rota are a bit at a disadvantage. And for most of her life, Judith believed her mage father and sister were exceptionally talented and disciplined, therefore were an exception. She did not have the luxury to worry much of others outside her family. Anyone could be a threat to their safety. 

Hervor maintains that it doesn’t have to be this way, and that they should be free. They should be held responsible for their actions like any other person, of course, but not forced to live life a certain way because of the way they were born.

Judy and Rota are a bit more pragmatic. They don’t approve of jails you can never leave, but a person can’t have that kind of power left unchecked. 

14) If they’d been in each other’s places would they have made the same or different choices? And who would they have romanced, if anyone?

Hervor would have let mages go at every turn and let Anders live, that’d probably the most different. If Carver’s an option, since she’s still her and not a Hawke, she probably go for him :p Otherwise Fenris.

Hervor would have rescued the mages in Redcliffe and once she captured Samson, she’d have given him to Dagna. She might have drunk from the Well herself because she would not have that same rapport with Morrigan (I mean…even when she DID she still denied her, so…) and she would trust she would share and use the knowledge responsibly.

She abso-fucking-lutely also would have gone for Blackwall, but she would take the revelation a lot harder than Rota, probably send him to the Wardens, which….yeah. Probably be with Bull, too, assuming it’s okay with everyone involved.

Judith might have chosen Harrowmont if not just because she was completely ignorant of dwarven politics and Bhelen was a colossal asshole and she would not have had the time to study up. No one in the Origins group is really her type.

Judith would have absolutely hated the Winter Palace and everyone involved. While Celene disgusts her, Gaspard is keen to the idea of trying to take back Ferelden, and she would do what she could to stop that. She also really hates resorting to blackmail/trickery so…she might have reunited Celene with Briala.

I think I said before Judy would have romanced Cass, but now I’m thinking Josephine is more her type. Cass is a bit harsh for her, I think; she’d be more drawn to someone charming, tender, kind, and clever.

Rota might have killed Loghain for putting her through so much, for making ending the Blight THAT much more difficult. She also probably would have killed the werewolves. She probably would have romanced Alistair because she likes chunky guys and gals, especially if they can at least grow some stubble. ALTHOUGH…she doesn’t appreciate goofiness the way Hervor did, so while she’d be the most attracted to him, I could see her possibly leaving him for Zevran.

Rota would have had a general do what you want approach with the DA2 crew EXCEPT for the shard, the mirror, and the potion. All these powers outside of her understanding are a no-go.

…She also would have pursued Carver. My dwarf girls just love chunky grumps. But she also would have been super in love with Isabela.

23) How old were each of your protagonists at the start of their respective games? Do you think their age affected the choices they made? Looking back would they have done any major action differently? 

I did have a set age for each of them but it escapes me....I think Hervor was 29 at the beginning of Origins, Judith was 24 at the beginning of DA2, and Rota was 32 at the beginning of Inquisition. Something like that.

Despite being the most brazen of the 3, and if anything she got MORE brazen as she got older, I think Hervor contemplates what she could have done differently. She pushed friends away. Her relationship with her home and her people is forever changed. Instead of 2 brothers and a father, she has 1 brother with a sister-in-law and nephew she barely ever gets to see. 

Judy already thinks too much about what she could have done differently for her own health. Carver’s death was all the harder because they fought before the loss at Ostagar, and she reflects as her still being an angry, overly critical young woman.

Rota I think was just old enough to accept that shit happens and dwelling on mistakes doesn’t solve much.