#especially for people who like to read the codex entries LOL

[milkywayes]

fanon can add positives to canon and expand on it but i feel like all too often people forget what even is canon lol. they’ll just read a piece of fanon so often they’ll repeat it unquestioningly without stopping to think about whether it makes sense… and whether it adds anything to what they’re personally writing. free set dressing lying around, but does it match your story? does it even match the themes of the source material? if you make the choice to stick with a piece of fanon because you enjoy it that’s fine, but there is supposed to be a choice there. not just mindless copying. you can even go and take some bits that you like, alter and adjust others… the world is your oyster. but that only works when you remember what you’re trying to build on. and when popular fanon directly contradicts canon it can get very frustrating

[sotc]

Post Veilguard high thoughts

Firstly, I LOVED LUCANIS. Despite my grievances below I can't help but love the game, and I'm high on copium on what potential future DA games could look like if they actually focused more on the fffff FUCKING ROLEPLAYING!!!!!!!! aspect of this game than an action adventure!!! UGH lol. I LOVED playing Armas so much tho and ultimately my affection for this game ties into that. I know I'm wearing red-tinted glasses. I know I am cringe but... I am free. I LOVED LUCANIS. Playing a Rook who was more stern towards people really helped balance the overall 'uwu live laugh love' tone the game was forcing. I think I can count on one hand the amount of times I selected the 'nice' options in this game. You can't be an evil dickhead or anything but it helped and made it far more tolerable and enjoyable. Slap in 'a Crow has to be a little unhinged since they murder for a living' headcanon and I came up with a recipe that tied together nicely. I truly don't think I can play a nice character in this game bc I'd kms sorry LMAO (but maybe that's also just me because I like playing bastards) And did I mention I loved Lucanis?

If you want to read a bit more detailed opinions it's below:

1) I loved the gameplay! The animations and detail to the animations were STELLAR. I feel like they really nailed the gameplay aspect in this game. I loved the level exploration, the specializations/talent system, the companion leveling, and the combat was amazing. I liked a lot of the OST. I really loved playing a rogue SO much I'm really excited to see how warrior feels. I really loved seeing the little codex entries with Dorian, seeing the Inquisitor again, and even Solas 💗 I think the major story missions like Weisshaupt, some companion quests and the last 3 hours of the game with its suicide mission was SO fun. HOWEVER.....

2) A lot of my frustrations with the writing largely comes from lack of nuance and deeper exploration. There is no mature explorations of these stories and topics because it all feels sanitized. There are dark portions to this game (the Blight especially, loved all that) but a large portion of story beats that try to explore its depths simply fall flat on its face because it all comes down to "every bad or evil thing is because of the evil gods and cultists." For example, racism, classism, slavery etc etc is shown to be enforced only by the Venatori and not the oppressive ruling class of mages or even other citizens in Minrathous is my biggest gripe. We walk into a literal police state in the first 10mins of the game where you see a giant beam shining down on a citizen being arrested and none of that oppression truly gets explored afterwards. I digress lol. 2-a) I think this also comes down to the scope of the story getting so large and ahead of itself there was never really a chance to let it breathe. It doesn't ground you or your character to the world where your Rook reacts to these situations more personally. Environmental storytelling is done well for the most part but the game really needed to dig deeper in a more personal roleplaying experience explored in side quests.

2-b) Character dialogue was WAY too modernized, there are few opportunities to talk to them, and conflict with them was absolutely nonexistent or minimal. MY team of people trying to save Thedas would never know what positive affirmation, mental health and group therapy is!! sorry but god dammit what da hell is this!!! Still, I did love all the companions though overall.

3) I expected more out of the lore. Even without worldstates no longer really being relevant (which I am willing to let go of). Like, we had heard so much about Tevinter and Antiva but we never got to really sink our teeth into their societies at all. There is so much rich lore there to explore that gets glossed over. Which again just goes back to 2-a lol.

4) Lucanis romance was SO lovely but suffered from lack of content that left much to be desired. His romance feels unfinished, which makes sense given he suffered from multiple rewrites and his writer was also let go in the middle of production. I have heard a lot of the romances suffer from feeling incomplete or lackluster too.

[allmannerofmalady]

Disgustingly long ramble about Dragon Age, love letter to my Inquisitor and... idk anymore

Ok so apparently, I can become so attached to a game/story that I can develop post-game depression... without even finishing the game?! At my ripe old age??

After 35ish hours in Veilguard, I realized I wasn't happy with how I was feeling, and more superficially, how my Inquisitor turned out and it was breaking all kinds of immersion for me 🤡 I played around with the character creator a bunch and then just closed the game and haven't restarted it since, and that was 4 days ago. I think that says a lot about why I was playing - I was playing to wrap up Inquisition.

I have a thirst to ramble, so a lot of Dragon Age (and a touch of Baldur's Gate 3) talk ahead. Spoilers, I guess?

The things I'm disappointed about with DATV haven't faded with time like I hoped they would. But, I will say that I’m also starting to get very emotional about the Solavellan ending which I was not a fan of when I first saw the spoiler. Whoever posted the flycam footage of the ending on Twitter, thank you!! It soothed my sad little heart.

My feelings aside, I'm happy for people who are fully immersed and enjoying the game, and I was truly hoping to be in that camp immediately :')

DA2 was my first Dragon Age game, and I love the shit out of it and that merry band of misfits. Marianne Hawke, the woman that you are. DA:O is one of my favourite games of all time as well - when I can get it to run because it always crashes on me.

But DA:I, for all its faults, just hit something very personal for me. I have played it for countless hours, been continuously immersed, and I have leaned on it a lot during crappier periods of my life. The things people hated about it (the Hinterlands, fetch quests etc) I found almost... relaxing? Meditative? I used mods to fix banter issues and would just roam, always changing my companions out to get that extra bit of dialogue and lore.

I know it has its issues and the combat annoys a lot of people, I was kind of indifferent about it, but to be fair I always play a Rogue/archer in DA , so I can't speak too deeply about the other classes. Once I discovered guides and videos about the best gear to craft, the best paths for leveling up, my Inquisitor was a beaaaast and I did enjoy the combat, as simplistic as it may be. Again - truly my comfort game.

I replayed DA:I in the months leading up to DATV, with my beloved canon Lavellan Inquisitor, Solas romanced, the whole journey. It was my first DA playthrough after 700+ hours spent in Baldur's Gate 3, and I remember the thrill at having a voiced protag again - for all the stilted moments (it's a feature atp with DA games) my Inquisitor still feels so real to me, especially after playing a voiceless Tav for so long. Yeah, even the infamous "WHAT'S GOING ON HERE" lololol

I just truly fell in love with the character I HC throughout the years, and I really really love the companions. Even the pricklier ones. I loved the intrigue, the politics - whatever, I loved it. Warts and all. The overwhelming lore that I learned piece by piece over 3 games, through codex entries and novels and art books and comics.

The DATV discourse has somehow become even more draining. It's hard to have a genuine discussion when trying to speak above the incessant bile being spewed by bigots who are hating the game blindly and are going out of their way to hurt anyone who enjoyed it, was excited about it, reviewed it - the vitriol is insane. Then came the waves of actual fans loving it, being disappointed, hating it, hating others for loving it, vice versa... and it goes on. Which I guess kind of happens every BioWare release lol but the 10 year gap feels like it's exacerbated everything.

I'm not even going to try and parse through my heartbreak at the dissolution of the Keep, player choices, and what DATV puts forward as happening in Southern Thedas. I have read the discourse, I have heard those who support it - and I just cant pretend to be ok with it. Months before DATV came out, I put together a slideshow of Chantry-level propaganda to convince my BG3 co-op friends to give DA a chance (heheeee) and one of the reasons I hooked them was that CHOICES MATTERED. Your world state mattered, the lore was incredibly rich, it was your story, and was such a key feature of BioWare games that even when other negative feelings might fade, I just don't see myself letting go of that one.

As for the Solavellan side of things... I think that most people who love Solas (myself firmly in that camp) are very attached to the character and the storyline, especially if they chose to romance him. He's just an endlessly fascinating character, and he will forever be iconic to me and part of my video game/fantasy pantheon - romanced or not. The first time I played Trespasser, I was blown away by the magnitude of the revelations, it felt like a Greek myth being played out. The burdened Inquisitor, the hand that led them to glory starting to kill them, the trickster God, once a trusted companion/lover. Euuuuufff I have never gotten over it, and after my, quite frankly, extreme emotional reaction the last few weeks I don't think I ever will.

I don't know if any ending would have filled the gap of the 10 year wait, to be fair. A game full of Solavellan scenes and dialogue would have been bitterly unfair/ridiculous for those who had different stories and relationships in their game. I am pleasantly surprised we got a scene (for a moment there, I was starting to lose hope), but again, I sorely wish it was fleshed out, on par with the Crestwood scene, or the magnificent climax of Trespasser. I think it took the flycam footage and Trick Weeke's Q&A on Bluesky for me to start to see past the disappointment and enjoy the scene for what was (I'm ignoring the Varric in the room and lots of other things rn, thanks for asking).

Everything else - I will try DATV again later and start with a clean slate, and accept that this is the game we got and not the follow up to Inquisition I had always hoped for. I feel like I have to caveat that I recognize that is MY issue, it is not a read on anyone who is enjoying it. My emotional attachments make me biased, not an asshole lol. The cliffhanger of DA:I always made me feel that the story was not over and the stakes were so high - and I'm realizing how much I wanted to continue that chase with the Inquisition to the end. That’s in addition to the end of bringing in player world states, the destruction of Southern Thedas - it’s just all a lot to accept. What was it all for?

All I can say is, as much as I am conflicted- I will always love Dragon Age from the bottom of my heart for giving me this world to play with and escape to. I hope to be back to Thedas once the feelings subside, after the highs and lows of the last 10 years. I would like to wrap up my Lavellan’s story, at the very least.

In the meantime, I have turned to my ~other comfort game of BG3 to finally start a post-Patch 7 run. And it all starts with a very confused and slightly worse for wear Lavellan on a mindflayer ship, with a fade touched left eye and arm somehow intact. (I realize the immense irony of taking a Dragon Age break by playing another game as my DA character but idk what to tell you). She is a Ranger/Wood Elf (see what I did there), with a suspicious bald man in a suit of armour talking to her in her dreams (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?). Anyway, she's probably going to kill a TON of Goblins, try to avoid the charming wizard (mage) hung up on his Goddess ex (!!!) and then climb mount Halsin. Good for her <3

[crescencestudio]

Hi everyone!

I hope you all have been doing well since we last talked <3 I had some news I needed to share regarding Alaris and game development/ progress. I was hoping to have done this sooner, but I hope you understand why I wasn’t able to as I explain.

So recently (this past week) I’ve had a flurry of bad news. Personal struggles that I won’t get too deep into because it’s extremely personal and private - but issues around things like family mental health, personal mental health, and grief and loss - all within the span of a week lol. As you can imagine, it’s been a lot to deal with, especially when I have to balance this on top of game development and real world responsibilities (aka PhD school). It’s been overwhelming, and while Alaris has often been my place for reprieve amongst stress since it’s a creative outlet, I’ve been struggling to create since I think the mental area where I create resides very close to the emotional area that’s been deeply affected by recent events. Anytime I try to sit down and write, I absolutely can’t and find my mind drifting off to the personal struggles. It’s all been incredibly overwhelming for me to deal with, and initially, I had wanted to wait things out to see where time would lead me. Obviously it’s only been a week and this week isn’t even a week after events have occurred, since everything moreso occurred within the span of a week. So in actuality, I would say it’s only been a day or two of actual processing.

I wanted to create this post to let you all know what I’ve been having to manage. I know with game development, it can be disheartening to not receive constant updates since it can leave people in the dark with whether the game is still being created and things like that. I’m here to let you all know Alaris is still being created, but I may need a small personal break to take care of my mental health. I’ve really had to scale back lately on my daily routine since I’m basically just barely scraping by doing the bare minimum right now. It’s really disheartening obviously because as soon as I get out of my personal burnout and creative funk, I’m hit with more personal stuff. But at the end of the day, your mental health is what is most important, and I want to take care of that so that I can keep making progress on Alaris in the long run.

For those who want specific updates with the game, I’m still planning on releasing Chapter 2, hopefully sometime over the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, Free Time won’t be included (as in the next date location that was slated for this release) just because as I said, it’s basically impossible for me to be creative in that way right now. What will be included in the release will be small edits to Chapter 1 - I’ve read and seen your comments on MC and have changed pieces of the writing so the character hopefully feels more consistent - as well as the full main chapter plot of Chapter 2. There’s still a lot of content even if the Free Time update isn’t included, so I hope it still feels sufficient. On top of that, there will be more CGs, sprites, and BGs, all of which I did before receiving the news I did. I’m hoping to also have the Dragon Energy mechanism coded and working in this release as well as any necessary Codex entries and additional stuff. As always, there will also be personality choices and you will be able to see those choices start to reflect in the dialogue in Chapter 2. All in all, it’s going to be a sufficient amount of content, just not the full amount since additional Free Time won’t be included. I hope you all can forgive me and be patient while I work through this personal stuff on my own. What I have planned is to finish the small stuff like coding and game mechanic stuff (since that’s not as intensive as writing for me) and release the Chapter within the next 2ish weeks. I’m hoping this is a good balance of taking things slow for myself while still giving content to you all. After release, I may or may not take an actual break on game development for about 1-2 weeks to just take care of myself since grief is always a brutal process and take care of my family.

I hope you all understand, and I hope this is a good enough compromise. I wanted to be transparent with you all since I appreciate your support and for those who are interested in the game, I don’t want to let you all down. And at the same time, I’m human and am honestly struggling and hurting a lot right now. Thanks again for all the support, kindness, and patience, and I’ll keep you all updated later this week on game development progress with the usual devlog, until then <3

[lookbluesoup]

Hey Wyn! I Just read all of your Blue Soup series! I love it all!!! Every word of it is fantastic! I've been wanting to start writing Fanfiction for Fallout for a long time, but I've always been intimidated by the prospect of writing already-established characters and "ruining them" (especially characters like Piper, Preston and Nick, who I plan to make main characters in my story). Do you have any advice on dealing with this?

Hi Anon! Thanks so much for your kind words! ;w; I’m certainly no expert and know this fear personally, but I’ll ramble here about my process and how I try to think about things. Hopefully it can encourage you, too! :D I’ll add the disclaimer that this is what works for me, and what works for me might not work for others, that’s ok! 

First off - writing is for fun. Wanting to do justice to the characters and capture their essence is a great goal, and also a learning process. You don’t have to do it perfectly, nor should you try. Perfection implies there’s nothing more to learn or grow over, which is one, unachievable, and two, the death of innovation. Just do the best you can with what you know, and let your passion for the characters guide the process. And be gentle with yourself. 

Our own experiences and preferences will effect how we write these characters, what traits of theirs stand out to us, how we define their shape, at least in small ways, and that’s not inherently bad. Just like many different artists can draw a character in 100 different styles and that character is still recognizable and familiar (and enjoyable!), writers can emphasize 100 different facets of that character, too. If you’re putting your heart into it, you won’t ruin them. Saw a beautiful LotR post the other day about that, talking about how the movies are different from the books, but the love for the story and characters shows because the people who made those movies were passionate about it, and they’re worthy adaptations of the stories’ spirit. It’s the same for fanfiction.

It’s personally more fun for me to think about the writing process like I’m exploring a character rather than making a statement about a character, which are two very distinct mindsets for me. Exploring is fun, engaging, its ok to change your mind and edit or alter your story as you get new information. It’s like a puzzle, thinking through a character’s motivation, finding ways to incorporate that into a story. Making a statement is more 'fixed’, and implies pushing a narrative as the correct one, which adds a lot of pressure. Personally? I don’t like pressure hahaha 

Still - it’s hard not to feel obligated to do something to a certain standard for one reason or another. My anxiety likes to tell me lots of little lies, and it can be very convincing. When it strikes, working through my nerves is often harder than actually writing LOL

When I first started writing Fallout fanfic, I didn’t post it anywhere. That took a LOT of the pressure off, knowing that none of this needed to, or was even intended to be, shared with others who might judge. These stories were just between me and the characters. It was safe. I could work at my own pace and enjoy the process in my little tide pool. Since deciding to share them, I’ve been really grateful for the support readers have given! It feels good, I’m glad I found the courage to post them.

As for working out that puzzle of what seems most likely for a character, how to capture the heart of them, I love voice lines! Codex entries! Compilations! The best way to get to know a character is to spend time with them. I take Piper everywhere with me, I want to know what she thinks about everything, her character really struck a chord with me and, well, cue hyperfixation hahaha I use the Windows 10 Game Bar to record audio clips and have a massive archive of her voice lines. Flipping through these is a useful tool for me to get back into her “pattern” of speaking. All the Companions have distinct voices and tendencies, which is another neat aspect to writing them. I feel more confident knowing I had access to the source material. Also I just. Like listening to her voice sometimes. Shhh

Other great resources for this are the wiki (which has text files of most, if not all, each character’s dialogue lines and conversation trees) and youtube companion reaction comps - this SOUNDS like a lot of work. But for me at least I love it, it doesn’t feel like work because I’ll be excited looking for specific lines a la “how does she talk when she’s angry”, “what does she have to say about mirelurks”, you don’t have to keep everything about each character in your head memorized - these audio and text files are great archives to find what’s relevant to a scene quickly.

When I got into Fallout, I also got interested in 1950s movies, music, and even radio shows like Johnny Dollar and Green Hornet. This gave me context around the characters, too. For example, Piper’s kickass reporter vibes throw back to a lot of old sleuthing reporter tropes, and interpreting her actions through some of those filters felt more authentic to me than applying her behavior to a modern day setting or my own inclinations. I guess along with that I’d also say, take notes! Have an observation? Write it down in a notes file, or a google doc, somewhere you can sync between your devices and add to whenever you think about it. What stuff sticks out to you as important or defining for these characters, what trends do you notice? If you have bullet points written down, these also make great quick references. Here’s a few screenshots from the terror that is my notes docs:

You can see they’re just short notes or scribbled down thoughts that I can quickly reference if I’m wondering how she might act in a certain scene at a certain time! For me getting into a character’s headspace is often more of a feeling than any kind of scientific research, having easy access to these pointers helps put me in the right state of mind to jump into the creative pool and swim around and get soaked in - character goo - okay bad metaphor. Anyway,

None of these are rules that you have to follow or things that you have to do to get the characters “right”, they’re just potential tools that can help you find information to build off of, and hopefully feel more confident. Maybe something else is more useful to you with organizing or keeping your head clear for writing, it’s cool to experiment and find out what works for you!

[anathema-game]

Twist of Fate: Anathema is a visual novel by Meishali and Merriweather, and currently under development. Each week, we talk a bit about our experiences as newbie gamedevs.

Today’s the launch of this blog series: Meishali is going to talk about the Codex feature within the game, Merriweather about what she’s been up to. If you haven’t read what the game’s about, check it out now.

Hey Everyone!

As promised, each week, we’ll talk a little about what we’ve been up to regarding the development of TOF:A. 

Before we get started, it’s important to get this out of the way: we still have some long, long months of development and editing before the game’s out. At the very least, all the core designs are there, and all routes are summarized, all endings (and their variations) planned and done. Plenty of things may change as we go, but hey, a solid 30% is done, including the introduction chapters (written!).

Meishali’s Side of Things:

Hey guys. Pretty excited to launch this series. I don’t know if it’ll be of much use to all of you, but I figured it’d be nice to keep track of what we’re doing, for potential fans, and even ourselves. These entries are pretty much like some sort journal for us. So we’ll look back into it in a year and be all “dang it, woah, what progress we’ve done!” (hopefully).

Without further ado: TOF:A is a game where you play as a Runereader, a scholar of sorts. Basically, someone who knows much more about the game’s lore than you do. 

This comes with several issues: usually, in videogames, the main character embodied by the player ends up being a “newcomer”, explaining why... Well, everyone’s explaining them stuff all the time. 

The character has the same “learning” rate as the player: you both discover things at the same time. Sometimes, they’ve even conveniently lost their memory, so you can have the prestige of playing a big badass everyone recognizes, but while still learning about the game. (Zelda: BOTW, The Witcher, Remember Me, Fire Emblem: Awakening... I could go on for hours.)

Anyways, you got what I mean. I personally see it as the easy road, that’s why I decided to discard it altogether: our main character is an intelligent, knowledgeable character. As a result, when someone says something inherent to the world of TOF:A, she simply nods, and says something along the lines of “I see”. Which often gets the player to go “Wait a minute,so it’s some kind of XYZ? How does it work exactly?” — You can have a grasp on these things, based on context, but if you want to read more about them, you’re screwed...

But fear not, people of TOF:A, for I, Meishali, found a solution: The Codex!

Well, it’s going to look a little better than that.

A little better, bitchin’, but still a little bare. 

I plan on coding a menu that’ll act as a dictionary of sorts: everytime a word that’s lore specific appears, it’ll get a special entry to give additional information to the player. You’ll be notified, and you’ll even be allowed to click on it through hyperlink, directly through the text box of the character as they’re speaking (I’m going to fight Ren’py for that.). 

Some entries are here for flavor, but others are important, and may help you as you progress in game.

The Codex is also persistent, meaning that it’ll stay with you even as you re-play a different route, with all the previous entries you’ve discovered. Some routes have exclusive entries, so if you’re a completionist, brace yourself.

Thanks for reading, and see you next week.

- Meishali

What Merriweather’s Been Up To: 

Hello! Wednesday update time! I’m currently wrapping up Oswyn’s second chapter. I have to say, chapter two has been my smoothest so far. 

When Meishali and I first started, I knew it would be a lot of work. I wasn’t kidding myself, but it was still really daunting. I had to get a system down. Working the variables (Meishali’s note: what we use to keep track of who said what, and when, to have characters react to it in the future!) into script itself can be really tricky, especially keeping track of everything. 

I basically have to have no less than 5,678,322 tabs open at all times. NO MORE, NO LESS. I work in law, and a lot of honestly reminded me of that lol. Extremely strict formatting and developing a set of steps are things I do at work, as well. Oh and do my posts sound a little formal? I’m a proper old lady. :D

Summaries are your friend, even if they suck to write. I broke down each chapter into scenes, wrote a summary for those, then went in and wrote the dialogue. It seemed tedious at first, but now I do it for everything. I’ve also never written anything outside of standard book format really, so adapting to such an image and dialogue heavy medium was odd at first. 

Dialogue was never a strong suit for me, though years of roleplaying helped quite a bit. None the less, I feel much more confident going forwards. 

 See you next week! 

 - Merriweather

[elvesofnoldor]

kinda went off the rail yesterday and made a dragon age elf oc called Micah, who is based on gwindor and I plan this elf’s story into finley lavellan’s story arc in inquisition and now i decided that after my lavellan and dorian breaks up one year post-trespasser in this fanfic arc i planned for them, they aren’t gonna get back together by the end of the fic. instead, my lavellan is gonna keep taking a break from this relationship and im gonna leave it open like that. like, im not sure if i wanna ship my lavellan with this Micah (whom i actually really love right now), but lavellan x dorian is making less and less sense the more i think about it. And honestly, i dont think any sort of development dorian can have would change anything substantially.

i always have a rough time writing lavellan x dorian, cause the fact that dorian is tevinter, the fact that he shares kinship with slavers and slave owners is just always fucking ridiculous on its own. And given that lavellan is an elf in dragon age universe and there is this history of tevinters enslaving his ancestors and enacting literal and cultural genocide against his people, i always have a hard time justifying lavellan falling in love with dorian and im pretty sure other ppl has that problem too. Also, even though dorian is the head of his house now, we still dont know if he dismisses the goddamn slaves his parents owned, so there is also this bullshit. Then there is dorian “i almost definitely slept with elven sex slaves in the elven slums--who are either socially marginalized people forced into sex work or victims of sex trafficking” pavus talking about how slavery isn’t that bad in tevinter, and then turn around and wax poetic about how same-gender relationships aren’t meant to be about love in tevinter wah wah wah. Anybody who read the codex entry on tevinter culture in da:i knows that same-gender relationships are only frowned upon in tevinter imperium when it disrupts the cis-heterosexual political marriages between noble mage houses, same-gender sex and relationships are in fact ENCOURAGED in tevinter when it happens between slave owners and their slaves. so yeah, i said dorian has never been a fucking victim before, well, this is why. sexuality and class privilege/oppression are intertwined in real world and in fictional universes that mirrored the real world and believe or not, being the top of social hierarchy means dorian got the better end of the bargain. he said, oh, “anything between two men, it’s about pleasure”. yeah, specifically a slaver owner’s pleasure in violating and further dehumanizing a person lol!!! but sure dorian you are so fucking oppressed.  im just. i have been wary before, of dorian. because of this slavery thing, and i never really talked abt why. and im just. i am even more wary now. and i still like dorian i guess, but, lmao. i just can’t make lavellan and dorian some sort of great love story, cause it really ain’t one. lavellan fell in love with dorian cause i insisted on having romance interests in every single one of my dragon age playthroughs--especially when it’s a canon one, but honestly he really shouldn’t have. in my fic, they broke up cause  finley lavellan knew dorian used to whore around in tevinter’s elven slums/alienages, and someone lied to lavellan and said that dorian is still doing that with lavellan living at his estate, and even though lavellan knew abt the truth later, he still felt gross about sharing a bed with someone who slept with potential victims of sex trafficking, so, they are taking a break for now. it’s just bad ok, lavellan is also in the right, ok. fuck knows whats gonna happen in da4, i doubt it’d change anything--and that’s speaking on the pretence that dorian will even be involved in da4.  i have this headcanon abt lavellan crafting a pair of rings for him and dorian in his forge as their engagement rings, i will retain that headcanon about the engagement rings, but the ring might not be for dorian.  anyways this is elf oc is based on gwindor, and gwindor’s story is that he was an elven lord (presumably a noldor elf) of hidden kingdom of nagathrond, and he was a valiant and fierce warrior who literally charged inside The Devil Himself (morgoth)’s stronghold with his company after his little brother was brutally executed (god. poor gelmlir) in front of the elven host, unfortunately for him, everybody in his company is killed and he alone was captured and enslaved and forced to work in morgoth’s mine for 14 years. apparently during the 14 years, he was “mutilated”, his hair turned grey during the process, and the experience “sapped his strength” (i think it’s like, spiritual strength, cause it seems elves in tolkien universe draws strength and power of all kinds from their fea aka their spirit). he eventually escaped and he lost his hand in the process, and almost died from losing the goddamn hand, but then he got rescued by another elf. BUT this elf (beleg) got accidentally stabbed to death by his disaster of a human best friend soon after. And gwindor, who’s already dealing with a truck load of trauma himself, was kind enough to comfort and and guide this disaster human dude (who went in shock cause he can’t accept what he did with his own damn hands) and brought him to nagthrond aka his home. but when gwindor needed love and support the most from his loved ones, they all stop listening to him and he lost his previous influence on his people and nobody is there to help him through his trauma, and he ended up feeling like he’s unfit to be loved, which is bullshit. eventually this disaster human dude’s dumbass advice got him and everybody he loved killed. And i was like it’s pretty bullshit that this obviously traumatized character is ostracized from his community for being traumatized, instead of getting the love and support he deserves and i said thats bullshit because in this house traumatized people get to have live happily ever after. so my desire to make gwindor happy inspires the creation of this elf oc.  now dragon age elves can’t really be lords or ladies or prince or princess, but the keeper and the keeper’s children are usually descendants of the elven nobilities of the dales, so, that should be close enough. Also i want more dalish mage characters anyways. This elf oc is a dalish mage, his name is Micah and he’s the First of his clan, as matter of fact. I wouldn’t say he’s exactly like merrill, but he does have merrill’s hair colour (dark raven hair but his hair is long), merrill’s eyes (more hazel than just green, but yeah) and merrill’s skin tone (light/pale). he’s also the more studio type, like merrill, and has a more bubbly personality than either of my lavellans. This dalish mage used to love the fade, and he loved the ancient songs he witnessed in the fade the most. Micah also has a beautiful voice and he’s very good at singing and he always carries a little lute with him to accompany his tunes. When he’s not nose deep in tomes about spells and magical theories and ancient texts, he’s out singing in the woods with his lute--he only performs in front of his family or his closest childhood friends since he’s not a people person. While finley lavellan has this appearance of gentleness, he can be quite ruthless and cold. And lavellan is more of a natural leader type of person. Micah, on the other hand, is truly a soft and gentle soul and is really not the kind to truly be a leader of any kind. 

so what happened is that, Micah is from a clan that’s always travelling around ferelden. they settled around denerium when the fifth blight broke out (that was events of da:o), but specifically he went to the denerium alienage to trade some goods with the shop keepers at least two weeks prior to the warden’s arrival at the alienage. However, he noticed the presences of the tevinters, become worried for the alienage’s safety since he suspects these are slavers, and he’s locked in the quarantine inside because of the spread of the plague. shianni found him trying to warn the sick alienage residents and shared her concern, but at the time shianni is just suspicious and not openly oppose to the tevinters’ presences. now in da:o, im pretty sure if you are an elf warden at least, you can feign sickness and get “admitted” in, but then you’d get stripped of your belongings and had to fight 14 tevinter enemies with literally no weapon so im pretty sure you weren’t supposed to do that (i did that cause i was a dumbass). so what happens is that Micah tried doing that, he ended up fighting a dozen and more soldiers with no weapon or any sort and was quickly subdued. And he was shipped away with the rest of alienage residents before the warden ever got to confront the tevinter slavers unfortunately. he just turned 20. Then after his disappearance, shianni becomes more openly oppose to the tevinters’ presences at the alienage since she’s more convinced that something fishy is going on.   so...a tevinter magister had him....for 10 years. that guy is a blood mage and he’s also like, basically danarius. so like, a demon. Not gonna go into detail about what happened because i dont like to talk too much about actual events that caused the traumas, i just wanna talk about the recovery and dealing with the trauma. but, basically, micah revealed right away that he is a mage, hoping the status of being a mage’d get him released in tevinter but that didn’t happen and the magister kept using his blood to fuel his spells, since his blood is potent with magic. later, the magister also experimented on him with semi-refined lyrium to make his blood even more potent but the experimentation failed and permanently blinded Micah and turned his hair white and he received a long scar from the left eye that goes straight down to his lips and continues down the right half of his torso. Basically, instead of losing a hand like gwindor, Micah lost his sight. And apparently, in canon, king maric got captured by this tevinter blood mage magister dude and alistair had to go and save him or whatever but king maric was hooked to this machine and trapped in this dream-state in the fade so that the blood mage can use his blood and life force to fuel spells. so after Micah is blinded and disfigured and deemed not as “useful” as he is before, what happened to king maric sort of happened to him, but he didn’t spend long enough time hook to the machine so he isn’t gonna die once he’s unhooked from the machine. for a while, Micah doesn’t even know he was trapped in a dream, and when he realizes he’s trapped in the fade, he couldn’t get out and back into his body. Events of inquisition start to happen, this tevinter magister is obviously a venatori, and he went south after the inquisition started to fight the venatori everywhere, probably as reinforcement. he brought Micah with him. And i think my lavellan either confronted this blood mage at hissing wastes (maybe it’s the moutaintop camp? maybe it’s after you cleared out the venatori at hissing waste and he came as reinforcement?). not to digress but i’d love to fight a blood mage in inquisition but that was not meant to be, so it’s happening in this oc fanfic scenario.  Inquisitor finley lavellan had a very hard time trying to get to this guy, and know he’s a quite a powerful mage, and he is forced to retreat with his companions and inquisiton soldiers to the camp. This time lavellan decided to sneak in while his party member created a distraction outside, and once inside the camp, he discovered poor micah hooked to a machine--presumably the source of the magister’s power. pegging the machine as something that traps the elf in the fade, lavellan connects himself to the machine and went to find micah in the fade. With lavellan’s help, micah is able to break away from the eternal dream and wake up. his body is obviously frail from spending a few years immobile, so lavellan tried to sneak out with micah in his arms but they were confronted by the magister who brought numerous archers and ambushed them at the lobby (inside some mountain at hissing waste), lavellan opened one or two rifts to suck in the archers, and petrified the magister with earth magic enhanced by the anchor’s connection to the fade (the magister is immobile and his flesh is slowly hardening from the earth magic but he’s alive and acutely and painfully aware of what’s happening to his body). Micah is the one who got the tear the magister from limb to limb with his own magic and explode him into chunks of meat, avenging the abuse that’s done to him. and finley brought micah with him to skyhold and there he rests and recovers. finley,  inquisition mages (not dorian though, him being tevinter mage and a mediocre healer and all, it’s more like, vivenne and solas actually) all help to nurture him back to health. he become healthy again, even though he is still blind and his hair remains the same grey white colour and the scar that disfigured his face is unremovable. Micah unfortunately becomes afraid of the fade and hates it when he dreams, sometime he’d wake up terrified, not knowing if he wakes up from a dream or if he just drops into one. It was with finley’s help that he become more aware of what’s dream and what’s reality. while Micah’s at skyhold, micah and finley becomes good friends as finley constantly visits him and even brings him a lute after knowing micah loves to play and sings. they become close enough that micah is comfortable singing to finley. micah didn’t get involved with inquisition business while he’s recovering, however, he did discover a way to “see” with the tap of his feet and sounds bouncing off object, kinda like how toph (btw i love toph) “see” with passive earth bending. i like to think micah always favours earth magic and telekinesis and rarely uses other elemental magic. Micah ends up combining his telekinesis skills with a form of weaponizing sounds (it’s sound bending lmao) and develops something very close to the force mage specialization in da 2. aka pushing people off with force of sound, manipulating gravity. And Micah uses sound to “see”, basically. And singing evolves from a hobby to necessity, since humming/singing or playing an instrument allows him to “see”, so that he’s not trapped in an eternal darkness.  with finley’s help, micah finds his way back to his clan still wandering around ferelden and they tearfully welcomed his return after presuming him dead for years. That was like, right after the events of inquisition main game concludes. Then three years later, micah crosses finley again in tevinter out of all places. turns out that micah has seen the dread wolf/solas in the fade and he was offered to join him but micah is loyal to finley and did not answer. More importantly, ever since micah is back, he hate it that everybody pities him. even though his clan loves him still, they treat him like a broken fragile thing who can’t take care of himself. And micah, is able to walk around and goes about his daily business as anybody who has their sights, is sick of people pitying him. The fact that he is no longer the First as he is seen incapable of becoming the keeper angers him (and micah is almost never angry), so he willingly left the clan and started his own journey to find out more about the dread wolf and that journey allows him to cross path with finley again. when micah met finley again, finley has already break up with dorian and now lived in the cottage he built somewhere in the woods at the outskirt of some city. There, they both devised the plan to venture out to ruins of Arlathan as companions to find out the truth about the blight and solas’ plan/stopping solas.