#it's just so strange and hollow

[combefier]

the thing that really gets me about how bad the writing for rook in particular is is that it would take so little effort to make it better. and it would probably make the writers' jobs a lot more interesting, too. you should be able to piss off your companions. in every other dragon age, you can piss off your companions. you can piss them off so badly that they try to kill you. if you just sort of fail to impress people one way or another in da2, you can end up having to fight your best friends to the death, or have one of them peace out after prompting an invasion of your city. the ability to have conflict with your companions wasn't always handled WELL (trying to talk to cullen about mage rights in dai comes to mind, as does trying to talk to dorian about slavery beyond the one conversation), but the option was there. it seems like the only way you can piss off your companions here is by making tactical disagreements they don't like. there's no room to have a personality some of your companions find off-putting, even though there are multiple points where your companions are put off by one another. purple hawke we're so not back. and the reason can't be "well you had to be someone varric would choose," because varric's best friend was hawke and there can be very many different kinds of hawke.

you're given a fascinating backstory and it will not come up beyond occasional comments relevant to your faction. mourn watch rook why does your backstory almost never come up i would tell people that story all the time. it's like dming for a player who came up with the most rich backstory you've ever seen and then watching them ignore it every time you dangle plot hooks in front of them. bioware do you remember what you wrote. bioware u good???? the sanitization of various factions aside because that's its whole own post, it would be so easy to give a dialogue here and there where rook could show more of what sort of rook they are by letting them reflect on their backstory. it would be so easy to write aggressive answers that are actually aggressive.

i've spent enough time in editing that i've just been trying to figure out if there's any possible motivation beyond a lack of investment in their own story, or a shocking paucity of good editors in their work environment. is it because the way they designed the game necessitates that everyone be there at the end? but you can still fuck up the ending by making the wrong choices there, à la me2, and you were allowed to piss people off in me2. if you can get people killed at the end anyway, why not let the choices you made and the responses you chose matter beyond "did you do enough sidequests?"

at a certain point, it's just confusing. they know how to do this, even if they don't always do it well. the lack of any real room for agency or personality or conflict is just... odd. this is also leaving aside how easy it would have been to incorporate SOME past choices from past games per their previous work. bioware i just want to talk

[probablyanalienindisguise]

[bunnieswithknives]

OK JUST A LITTLE THING BECAUSE IM INSANE @cubbihue

Song: Plastic by Cheekface

[salthien]

gay bugs! as promised!

touch starved vessel gets to be impatient and politely request affection when they crave it. i don't think quirrel would mind much.

[hakunoknight]

pov: u interrupted some random lesbians on date night

[ayyponine]

not to be a milennial but harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban really is that bitch....

[gophergal]

Behold, the six "unique" roles of Stonevale, one of the colonies in Fading Hollow.

I've been thinking about this setting a lot lately, including all the characters. Honestly, I want to make every cat individual under the hood, but that is slowly driving me mad. For now, here are six of them:

Chief Ra'shira - the leader. Aggressive, irritable, but fiercely loyal to kith and kin.

Deputy Haystalk - her second in command and gentle younger brother. He has spent the majority of his adulthood smoothing over the trouble his sister's temper causes

Raven, the Seer - religious leader and second eldest cat in the colony. A grumpy bastard for the ages. The only company he enjoys is Mera and his sister, Blueshell

Mera Yari-tsa - a lifelong queen who has had a paw in raising every litter in the past 50 moons, earning her great respect. The most knowledgeable midwife in the hollow

Acorn - a senior messenger. He won't retire until his former apprentice, Puff, is ready to mentor another cat to take his place

Puff - a young messenger. He seems empty headed and the wrong body type for his position, but he has a fantastic memory and a knack for social situations

[jorvikzelda]

killing someone. had a migraine for a week and then was permitted a single migraine-less day (where mind you i STILL HAD A PRETTY BAD FUCKING HEADACHE) before the next one hit. absolutely fuck you man

[simcardiac-arrested]

honestly don't even remember what happened in 2017 at all, it was a year. that year is no longer.

what the fuck DIDN’T happen in 2017

[a-url-that-exists]

hot take Deadpool and Wolverine wasn't that good it was sort of just Ryan jacking off about how much money Disney was giving him, fanservice, and comic book/tv show references that only the most hardcore nerds would get.

[too-many-paper-cranes]

anyway, here's an annotated map of deepnest_east_12 (the room before the hornet 2 arena), in case you were wondering

[katagawajr]

ok i finally settled on a durge design…. this is ji <3 strange looking ranger, almost like some kind of decayed tiefling….

and her “guardian” is actually just what she used to look like before… well.

[allyouneediskilly]

had a dream where i was only nominally in charge of the narrative. it was my dream but some characters would punish me for it. as the dream went on more and more people i knew in real life, people i didn’t “create” left the story as other characters bled into it. it was still a dream so it’s not like i had any real control to begin with. woah .the consequences.

[fever-pitches]

-Burnout

An experience I've tried many many times to get across in art so that I can let it go. This time though, I felt myself let go, so I'd say I fucking ate.

[poet-tree-lines]

40 minutes into this 7 hour audiobook, and I think I have the motive, means, and opportunity for a murder that hasn't happened yet. which... is either really sad because i'm never right about this stuff and like to guess, or really great because there's a plot twist coming and that'll be fun

unfortunately, i think the twist is the answer i have

[binnie]

seriously considering making a mental health blog