#so i chose the ending that lacked personal catharsis because it's the one that honored my friends

[revvethasmythh]

So I went and watched all the possible endings, and it confirmed something I had been thinking, which is that the redemption ending choice is, perhaps, the most immediately regretful one--but that they all come with some form of regret. In the redemption ending, Rook has to knowingly deny themselves the catharsis of retribution (should they desire it, which, at least for me it felt difficult not to) in order to offer Solas one last, painful chance to do the right thing. That willful denial of your own catharsis feels like an immediate regret. Giving Solas the opportunity to pursue atonement might very well be the best choice all around, but it is also incredibly painful to offer that to someone who has done so many terrible things (not a small amount to you personally). Why does he deserve another chance? Especially when so many dead (including a beloved mentor) lie in his wake? Which, I suppose, is the point: he doesn't. But you offer it anyway and it SUCKS ASS, because how could it not?

I don't know how this plays with other story choices (a sacrificed Davrin or a Harding who embraced her anger, for example), but within the context of my own choices, I can imagine an immediate satisfaction to either tricking or fighting him--especially the trick ending, where you can actively name drop Varric--but it feels like the sort of thing that would feel worse as more time passes. Once you've calmed down and are able to ask yourself if that's what the people you've lost really wanted. Varric, in Regret Superhell, didn't want vengeance. He just wanted his friend to walk a better path. And Harding always believed there was another chance for anyone, so long as you kept reaching a hand out for them--even when it sucked ass. So the redemption ending feels like a sort of indignance, an instant regret for not doing worse, for not getting comeuppance, for being forced to eschew satisfaction (related: I wonder if the Inquisitor feels those things as well coming out of this ending, considering how long they've lived under the shadow of Solas' actions). Conversely, the other two endings feel like an immediate satisfaction, because you got to trick the trickster with all the wits Varric taught you, or because you finally got to punch him in the face and it felt really good. But I feel like those endings would come with a creeping regret, something that sneaks up on you later, especially when remembering the fallen and what they would have wanted you to do. Ultimately, because of that, it feels like no ending is devoid of regret. Which I suppose, is rather thematic.

[odd-dragon]

Okay I wanna know General #7 for Morgan, Fortune, and Rhiannon

But I also want to know about the Dribbles question for all of them but especially Fortune because I think she's the only one who would be down for it being a bard.

General #7: Do they have their own personal quest that spans the course of the game?  Can it take different branching paths depending on the choices the Player Character makes?

*Quick note* - I have played with mods for most of my games, and really like playing with weird tiefling types from Astralitie's Tiefling Compendium. As such, certain character decisions were informed by this.

Morgan: I like to think Morgan has an interesting conundrum to work with, and her quest would have branches too, as she's a Baalzebub (rot and death) tiefling druid. "But Cal!" You might say "Druids deal with all the aspects of life, and there are druids that deal specifically with death and the nastier aspects of nature, like shadow druids and twilight druids!" And that's true. But Morgan wasn't trained by those druids. She's a circle of dreams druid, a healer. She has this fun dichotomy of life and death, light and shadow, growth and rot... and she's just left her circle. She's trying to find her place in the world, and come into her own as a druid, and she's teetering between the two ways she could do it. Her first introduction to this conundrum, of course, would be facing off with the shadow druids in act one, and the way she leans after that would of course be determined by which actual mainline story beat the player chose, if given the chance. In the end, it'd be a very classic nature vs nurture case, and the player would end up with either a fantastic healer and buffer with a couple decent spells and an altogether cheery perspective on life or a terrifying death-wielder with poisons and fungus and an altogether grumpy, isolationist attitude in their corner.

Fortune: Fortune is a Nightborn Tiefling, born via a pact her parents made with a Night Hag (which, fun fact, is a type of fiend, rather than fae). She was then taken and would have been trained by said hag, if she hadn't been rescued and ran off to find her own way in the world. I feel like the Auntie Ethel quests are sort of lacking in their ignorance of a hag's best asset- her coven. Fortune's quest would probably have to do with her hunting the hag who created (and tried to brainwash) her, and for simplicity's sake, I would make said hag one of Auntie Ethel's coven. There wouldn't so much be a branching quest with two outcomes as much as there would be a question of how ruthless is she by the end of it- the hag would probably have to end up dead either way, and she's not going to get much from it other than catharsis, so the question is more a matter of how many other bodies she leaves in her wake and how many people she and the player help in the process.

Rhiannon: She's the one least likely to have a long-spanning quest over the course of the game, as she's honestly the least independently-developed tav I have- she started as a self-insert lol. But she probably has a small quest, likely related to Chromatic Scales, as she is a music-lover and that shop is criminally under-used in-game.

The Dribbles Question: What do they say if the PC tries to force them to go up on stage with Dribbles the Clown?

Fortune's response: She's a bit of a tease, so she'd be reluctant at first, probably responding with something like: "...You know, I don't think this guy's up to Clown Code. You sure?" And then she'd be totally down to go up there and wreak havoc, no problem.

Morgan gets an honorable mention for: "Alright, but that's a Shadow Mastiff. You all see the Shadow Mastiff too, right? Like we fought dozens of those things in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, and they were never good news." As curious as she is, she's really not a fan of crowds... or clowns. And of course the shadow mastiff is a big deal.

Rhiannon, actually, went up all on her own in my original playthrough, so her response would probably be something along the lines of "Sure, but no promises as to quality of entertainment."

[independentartistbuzz]

7 From The Women is a segment here on Independent Artist Buzz where we ask some of the industries finest seven questions. During this time of accusations and the lack thereof, we think it’s important to give women a voice. We chose to ask seven questions to honor the seven Wiccan clans.

Kristen Rae Bowden is a beautiful turmoil of tenderness and willfulness. It’s a paradoxical sentiment also evident in her artistic sensibilities. In her upcoming debut, Language and Mirrors, she fluidly, and authentically, inhabits earthy Americana and majestic orchestral rock.

What have you been working to promote lately?

In November 2018 I released my first album, entitled “Language and Mirrors.” On March 15 2019 I will release my first music video from the album. The video is for my song “It Isn’t About You.”

I wrote “It Isn’t About You” while living in a screened-in-shack with no power on the Big Island of Hawaii. I was 22, fresh from college, excited by the idea of living “off the grid”, and very much in love with a young man whose family owned land in Hawaii. After we moved there, however, our relationship quickly deteriorated, practically turning to dust before my eyes. I felt powerless to save it, or leave.

I found myself on a metaphorical island, as well as a real one, and my feeling of isolation stemmed from my obsession with the unhealthy relationship. It became difficult for me to imagine myself outside of it; I no longer felt whole on my own.

Even without electricity, I remained a night owl. I stayed up alone in the tiny dark house on the edge of the jungle, drinking wine, and writing poetry by candlelight. This is how I wrote “It Isn’t About You”: as part of a long, freeform poem. (It is one of my only songs where I wrote the lyrics first.)

Later, I put the poem to music, after I finally got the courage to leave the relationship, and I’d steadied my mind. The song is about making that return to yourself and your own joys, strengths, and needs. It is also about taking responsibility for your own choices, so that you never feel (unnecessarily) like a victim, and you can move on.

The music video for “It Isn’t About You” will premiere on Facebook Premiere on Friday March 15 at 1:00 pm.

Please tell us about your favorite song written, recorded or produced by another woman and why it’s meaningful to you.

I think, after all these years, my favorite track written by a woman is still Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”. The melody starts out conversational, understated, and then it soars! The simplicity of the instrumentation creates such an intimate experience, you feel like she’s in your living room, singing right in your ear. You hear every word, which is perfect because her lyrics go straight to the heart.

The beauty of the poem alone overwhelms me. Joni has a way of writing lyrics that are very specific to her own experience, and full of imagery, but when I listen to them, I feel like they are about me too. Much like an abstract painting where different people will see different things, Joni’s artful words allow you to color them with your own experience. This makes me feel truly known, and comforted somehow as a human being, because I know I’m not alone.

What does it mean to you to be a woman making music/in the music business today and do you feel a responsibility to other women to create messages and themes in your music?

When I decided I wanted to become a career musician, I didn’t think at all about my gender. I just knew I wanted to make music; that’s all I thought about.

Now, I believe that as a woman in the music industry, I have the opportunity to showcase a more feminine (as in the divine) incarnation of strength. As a culture I think we view strength in a very masculine way; it often means hardness, stoicism. I believe we tend to ignore the strength that it takes to be vulnerable... the strength that lies in open-heartedness and flexibility. After all, a branch that cannot bend is more likely to break. In my songs, I find myself wanting to express this: how brave one must be to remain open-hearted. I think it is something I have to offer that has to do with my womanhood and femininity.

When I write I honestly don’t feel a responsibility to create certain messages and themes in my music. I write according to my feelings, so those end up being the messages and themes. However, when I write a song about a certain moment in my life, I definitely listen critically to the song and ask myself what kind of message it is going to send into the world.

Once I wrote a song about a previous boyfriend cheating on me with a girl who I really thought was my friend. They both lied to me about it for several weeks. It was overwhelmingly hurtful. Some men say they have a “bro’s code” to not let women come between them. So, I wrote this song about the lack of a “girls code”, and basically sang about how I knew my boyfriend at the time was going to lie to me, that was obvious. But I never expected my woman friend to be a part of it, sneaking around and lying to me also.

Later I realized I couldn’t release the song, because of the message one might take from it. My lyrics ended up sounding too much like a woman who blames the other woman when her significant other lies to her, instead of holding him responsible, and also taking responsibility for the choice she has made to be with him. What that particular “friend” did to me was unkind, but I don’t ever want to sound like a woman who puts other women down as a group. I didn’t want to risk being interpreted in that way.

I hope to be a voice of catharsis, empowerment, and empathy.

What is the most personal thing you have shared in your music or in your artist brand as it relates to being female?

My most personal song is “My Father’s Daughter”. My Dad was an extremely charismatic, artistic, and captivating man. He was also quite the womanizer. He passed away when I was 18, and I still miss him every single day.

I think as a girl, when you grow up with a Dad who is your absolute favorite person, but over time you learn about some of his negative proclivities, you’ll have some kind of emotional reaction. And the reaction will be based (at least in part) on how you are his daughter. If you were his son, you might respond quite differently.

“My Father’s Daughter” is really about me getting into a relationship with a man who had also lost his artistic (and womanizing) father. He had a daddy-backstory similar to mine, but he had responded in a completely different way. We could understand each other better in some ways due to the similarities in our respective Dads’ personalities, but in other ways we really had no hope of ever understanding each other.

The song also has to do with the fact that sometimes, there is no stronger bond than shared grief.

I think this is the most personal thing I’ve written as it relates to being female, because it’s specific to what we would call “Daddy issues”. Anyone can have Daddy issues, regardless of their gender, but being female definitely effects how these complicated feelings play out in one’s life. This is true for me, at least.

What female artists have inspired you and influenced you?

So many! I’ve already mentioned Joni Mitchell. I just finished reading “Just Kids” and Patti Smith is a poetic hero. Others include Joan Jett, Nina Simone, Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin, Patsy Cline, Erykah Badu, Zap Mama, Emmylou Harris, Iris DeMent, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Stevie Nicks, Carole King, Amy Winehouse, Bjork, Lady Gaga, Billie Holiday, Ani DiFranco, and Tracy Chapman.

Who was the first female artist you saw that made you want to create music / be in the business?

When I was 19, my sister and I went to see Ani DiFranco. I remember loving how the audience was overwhelmingly female, right as I walked in. I noted to myself how rare it is to be in the company of mostly women, at least for me. Ani sang her songs and I think everyone in the theater was affected, you could just feel it in the air. I laughed and I cried. I marveled at how she connected with each member of the audience personally ; she made each of us feel like we’d met her. Each of her songs consistently blew me away with her confessional storytelling. She stirred my emotions and completely inspired me.

The next night I went into a practice room at my college, played the piano, and wrote my first real song. I didn’t mean to write it ; it surprised me. It was about my Dad dying, which had happened about a year before. I scribbled it on a cocktail napkin that I’ve saved ever since.

Do you consider yourself a feminist? If so why and if not why?

I definitely consider myself a feminist. Women deserve equal rights and bodily autonomy, period. I grew up very privileged, in a community/culture that told me I could be anything I wanted, so I have to admit I was rather shocked to find out that some people still think women aren’t supposed to do certain jobs or have certain roles in life. I also grew up in a very homogenous community. For a long time I was very ignorant when it comes to the idea of intersectional feminism, and I still have a lot to learn about how feminism can exclude the experiences and points of view of women of color and LGBTQ women. It is important to me to be an ally to all women, especially those in minority communities, as they are the ones who are most effected by sexism and discrimination. Learning how to be a good ally is an ongoing process, and I consider it my responsibility to educate myself about issues outside of my personal experience. All in all, I am a feminist because women are still so marginalized, all over the world. Women’s rights are human rights, and as long as things remain unbalanced, this deserves our constant attention.

Connect with Kristen online:

https://www.kristenraebowden.com

https://www.facebook.com/KristenRaeBowden/

https://www.instagram.com/kristenraebowden/

https://twitter.com/bowdenrae?lang=en

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0PPhdmifjwxW8fkF_CxIoQ

https://kristenraebowden.tumblr.com/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2mi6KqRPH72KiS6r1A9ePI?nd=1

https://soundcloud.com/kristenraebowden

https://kristenraebowden.bandcamp.com/releases