#your quest is over

[everygameover]

Uninvited 1989 - NES

[drenched-in-sunlight]

*SoTE spoilers undercut

This is a continued discussion in light of Marika's newly discovered tragedy. It changes so many things about how we look at the story thus far but more importantly - the DLC story trailer, especially this scene:

think about how Messmer knows, very acutely, that at one point his mother could have been cut up and put in a jar. and that his other kins were not so lucky....... it gives that scene such a tragic edge.

he wasn't doing this just for the violence. this is his answer to Marika's love and all she has done for him. yeah it's not right, it's not justified, but as something done to avenge for the kind of pain she went through? it won't be logical nor right but it's something he will do again without hesitation.

the infirmary in Shadow's Keep shows that he's trying to care for and save whatever left of her people. their people.

the line he said in his armor set description hits different when you consider all that. he wants to be the heir to all her sorrow and all of her pain. wishing that he could alleviate even just a bit of the burden of her grief and survivor guilt.

i wonder if, when Marika hid him in the Land of Shadow, fearing people will judge him for the malevolent snake he carried, she raised him in her home village? this will explain why the Tree Sentinels guarding the village drop two Blessing of Marika - the blessing that specifically stated Marika made it for Messmer's sake and him alone. it will also explain how he knew of his Mother's tragic past and took it upon himself to carry out her wish of vengeance for her people.

(also if you wanted to get to Marika's village, you have to perform the O Mother gesture before her statue in his Shadow Keep, implying he's guarding the way to her home village as well.)

One other thing I like is that in the story trailer, the heroic music sounds like it's for Miquella. and it is, in a way. it is his boss music, but the lyrics has "Ave Marika Aeterna" (Hail, Marika The Eternal).

Given that the boss arena is where Marika - the sole survivor of a whole village, walked through to salvage the remains of her people, making them the symbol of her divine ascension, I wonder if that OST is actually for her - the God, the woman whose story is finally realized in this DLC, and those female voices singing in honour of her are the spirits of her fallen kins: cheering on their last hope for justice. Through this girl, those people who had been wronged and died there will live on eternally.

All this of course seems like such a charitable take on all this, after all Marika ended up being just like the oppressors who used to put her people in jars, but I think I just want to appreciate how the environmental storytelling of this DLC is simply amazing. and once you consider that this is, in the end, Marika's story, everything will make a lot more sense.

[lafaiette]

Emmrich: is kind with spirits and demons, loves his skeleton son (who may or may not be a spirit of Curiosity), treats everyone equally with respect and kindness, is always ready to help, is shown to trust people too easily and get hurt in the process, loves being asked questions, enjoys places other people find creepy and eerie, is a powerful mage who uses necromancy and blood magic for healing purposes...

EMMRICH, MY BELOVED, MY HEART IS YOURS

[art-is-kayos]

Sight of a Star - Blue-ish Star Ryōshū and Don Quixote

[iridescentmirrorsgenshin]

analysing queercoding in sethos's haikaveh voice-line

(This analysis is from my Haikaveh queercoding essay found here!)

In Cyno’s Story Quest II Alhaitham and Kaveh’s progression goes unspoken by the Traveller and Paimon in comparison to previous events and quests where their relationship is questioned (which you can read here!)

This lack of mention of the visible progression of their relationship points to a secrecy that the player is not privy to, and this development is only mentioned when Cyno highlights the unlikeliness of Kaveh and Alhaitham studying together in the House of Daena

Kaveh and Alhaitham’s relationship has tangibly improved, in their dialogue with each other, their listening and comprehension of each other, and their active reliance on each other, however, a status of their relationship has still yet to be given.

With the lack of questioning from the surrounding cast, this appears to be a continual deliberate method of avoiding labelling Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship status (further discussed here). This aligns with the previous method of queercoding Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship in avoiding labels of friends, and here, it can be seen that labels such as ‘roommates’ are also avoided. This omission continues to be deliberate, and it is even more poignant due to the progression of their relationship, alongside the secrecy of what it entails and how it came about.

Sethos’ voice-line about the two highlights this to an extreme. As discussed, his voice-line is entitled ‘About Alhaitham and Kaveh’, and is the only voice-line in the game to pair together two characters when a character gives an opinion of another.

In this, Alhaitham and Kaveh are inextricably linked together - not only in being delegated a joint voice-line, but also due to Sethos’ opinion of them.

This separates them from the crowd due to an intimacy shared between the two of them. Sethos states that Kaveh is always speaking, to Alhaitham, in a low voice, as if to not let others overhear. This directly indicates a secrecy between Alhaitham and Kaveh which is not to be breached by the crowd, Sethos, and the player included, as Sethos fails to overhear anything to relate back to the player.

Sethos finishes by claiming that when Alhaitham and Kaveh are “together”, they become a different force entirely as if they were alone, as seeing them together means “you just can’t look away.”

Sethos’s voice-over creates an allusion to a secret existing between Alhaitham and Kaveh, and this secret conveys very much the essence of queercoding itself??

The two discuss something which cannot be known to the player, or someone attempting to breach the line between the public display of their relationship and that of their private relationship. This private relationship occurs outside of the player’s knowledge and pertains to the development of their relationship, along with what the two now consider the other.

The ambiguity of their relationship here only continues to point to the two’s connectedness, in that they are coupled together by an outsider. It’s interesting that rather than the personal pronoun ‘I’, Sethos uses the collective pronoun ‘you’ when referring to Alhaitham and Kaveh as a pair.

This directly addresses the player, and draws attention to the uniqueness of their relationship. Yet again, this is the same method used to purposefully cause the player to question Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship – and, just as other instances, there is no clarification.

This secret that is generated between Alhaitham and Kaveh directly equates to the idea of queercoding, as no definitive answer is given as to what exactly the secret, or intimacy, is – and this aligns with the game’s inability to confirm queer characters or relationships.

Alhaitham and Kaveh having reconciled is considered of prominent importance. This is seen in their balanced viewpoints having the power to bring about good for others, but here, it is specifically highlighted that Alhaitham and Kaveh are ‘other’. They are separate from the crowd, regardless of being surrounded, and they are perpetually in their own private sphere, despite attempting to be intruded upon by an eavesdropper.

Together, they become a unit that stands out, and yet this is contrasted by the intimacy of their togetherness. It is unknown what the two discuss, only that it is private between the two of them alone. This intimate covertness, this secrecy, in the presentation of Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship demonstrates the usage of queercoding.

As established here, this aligns with the queer taboo, in that closeted queer people live a life secret to the heteronormative public, and thus become ‘other’ in this secret part of themselves. The secrecy of Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship can correlate with the real-world negation from heteronormative bonds, found in queer relationships not accepted by the society around them.

This is seen in how the true nature of their relationship is avoided within the game, and, yet, is highlighted by several characters for the player to question. This lack of answer, as established, leaves the interpretation to the player. It appears deliberate that Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship status is constantly called into question in previous quests and events, but their relationship, when improved, goes unmentioned by the very characters that once questioned it, such as Paimon.

Yet again, Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship is styled to deliberately avoid labels, and yet, their closeness is deliberately highlighted. Along with this, the secrecy of their private life is poignant, seen in both Sethos’ voice-line and in the ambiguity of their relationship in Cyno’s Story Quest II.

With this method, the game purposefully allows for questions which ask as to the specific nature of Alhaitham and Kaveh’s relationship – just as it deliberately avoids giving a specific answer. Highlighting the two’s closeness, and the ambiguity of this, is an active method of queercoding.

[bitterseaproduction]

Angsty Bilbo dying Bagginshield art giving me another story idea~ 😂😭💕

But no, seriously? A play on the popular time travel fix-it, but one where Bilbo dies protecting Thorin during the Battle of Five Armies? And Thorin is inconsolable, I can’t even. And he might pull himself together long enough to stabilize Erebor, but there is No Way he can be a good ruler in his grief, so he has to pass it on. (I was going to say to Dain just to twist that knife a little harder, but actually there are reasons hinted below on why Fíli & Kíli must have lived.) And Thorin just… he wanders, probably. A shell of himself for the rest of his days.

And yet, when he inevitably passes away, he awakens on the road to the Shire. And he’s younger. And he’s so confused, quickly suspecting he must be dead and this is nothing like what he was taught to expect. But then his instant impulse to check Bag End has him walking in on that same meeting from so many years ago, his Company intact, the wizard smiling at him, introducing him to… to…

Bilbo. His Bilbo. The sight of him makes Thorin want to weep and hold him and never let go again, but he is instantly terrified to do anything, because is this a dream? Will he wake? What happens if he says something new, will ‘this’ be ruined somehow? He doesn’t want that, doesn’t want to change anything, save for the end. The very end.

But, even as he strives to mimic himself, he knows something is wrong. He’s off-script from the start purely due to his shock, but he tries to recover, get back on track, and within words, he’s managed it. The discussion is righting itself, and no one there could possibly know the difference, right?

And yet, Bilbo stares at him. From the instant Thorin walked in, Bilbo was staring, looking lost. As he had before, that first time, but it wasn’t the same. Bilbo had been confused then as well, but it had been a light, anxious uncertainty then. This time? He was frowning, his expression tense.

His eyes haunted.

Because Bilbo has also lived that night before. Just once as far as that night was concerned, but it was familiar to him. So familiar. That first night had haunted him for decades, to the very end of his long, long life, when he thought he might know rest, and perhaps — if he was truly as lucky as some once claimed — he might get to see his friends again. See Thorin again.

Instead he had slept, drifted away, and awoken to a battle about to start.

And he had questioned it, had stumbled that first time, but he adjusted. He tried to save Thorin. To save them all.

And he failed. Again.

Then, when he finally slept for the first time afterwards, he awoke to the battle starting again.

And again.

And he tried, over and over, day after the same horrid day to find a way to get through. And sometimes Thorin lived. Sometimes the princes did. Sometimes, new people died. The wrong people.

Once, in his darkest moments, he thought that perhaps someone was trying to teach him humility, teach him to accept fate as it was and not try to fight it, not change anything. And so he went through the motions as well as he could remember them after all those years, following them to the letter, save for when he sobbed all the harder when it was done.

He sobbed again, the relief bone-deep, when he awoke again the next day, the battle still awaiting him.

He lost count of his attempts, and no one could rightly vouch for his state of mind when he finally resorted to the one thing he had refused to try: Not since that fourth (or fifth?) time, when he managed to be there for the fight and threw himself in Azog’s way, but Thorin pulled him out of the way, and screamed at him with such outrage and fear and despair in the few beats he bought by pushing Azog over, that Bilbo never attempted it again.

Until that final day. And that time, Bilbo didn’t give Thorin a chance to stop him.

And it broke a heart Bilbo thought long since shattered to hear Thorin scream, to feel him pick him up and hold him close and hear his voice like that. But the words faded soon enough, and he couldn’t feel anything, nothing except for regret and acceptance, because this was different. He felt it. This time, he would not awaken again, and that was fine. He had saved his king, kept all of his dwarves safe that last time. If that was to be the last, then that was all he could ask for. It was alright. He could sleep.

Then he woke up.

Not outside Erebor, but inside a hole. His hole. Bag End.

He walked outside, stood in the sun, and watched a wizard walk up the road to his door.

He did not understand.

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything

[stars-irises]

My favourite trope is found family but they all suck

[happyendingsong]

"before the match, when i saw her holding something like a queen's quest flag in the entrance and when i saw her matches after joining h.a.t.e., i thought she was half-hearted and i also had some resentment. but during those 27 minutes and 23 seconds that we fought, i felt all kinds of emotions, like "i'm pissed off" and "i want you to go back to being the old kamitani." when i saw kamitani screaming out loud from the depths of her stomach, unlike before, i thought "that's where you belong." i'm sure she has all kinds of conflicts and beliefs inside her, even if she doesn't put them into words. even if our paths are different, kamitani will always remain important to me. I want to fight her again."

--maika, quoted in tokyo sports, translated by meraWRESTLING

[wickedcriminal]

I found my Last Dragon folder and i can't believe I never posted these

Hiccup as the Unicorn (Dragon)/Lady Amalthea

Fishlegs as Schmendrick/Prince Lyr

Camicazi as Molly Gru/Captain Cully

Alvin the Treacherous as King Haggard

The Witch Excellinor as Mommy Fortuna

Valhallarama as a Wilderwest warrior, Stoick as a castle guard, Old Wrinkly as the castle cook. King Haggard had men-at-arms in the book, so that's who they are

New secret roles for Hiccups 1 and 2

Snotlout as Ruhk

I had a vision that Hiccup would be a seadragon that goes on the same journey as the Unicorn, trying to find out where the other dragons disappeared to, befriending eccentric friends with dark secrets, looking for the Famed and Terrifying Dragon Furious, and the terrible King Alvin the Treacherous. He becomes human, but instead of falling in love he just gets adopted by the castle staff and his crazy friends and he suddenly realizes that he loves this mortal life more than his immortality; but will he have to give it all up to save the dragons?

[puppyeared]

i got to the sadness attacking scene

[bugbittenflowers]

So I just had to grind Blackwall approval because that man did NOT like me, so his betrayal quest triggered after the solavellan break-up. Just imagine. You're dating this real cute girl and you're about to tell her that you've been lying about your identity- but you chicken out, grab her ass, then dump her. THEN the stinky barn man she befriended because she was heartbroken ALSO has a secret identity... and you think she's going to do something, kick him out, let him hang, SOMETHING. But then she goes out of her way to destroy the inquisitions rep to save him, and THEN just accepts him, no question. Like... bro you fumbled...

[azuneekun]

went from never fishing without mods to catching every fish in vanilla stardew. follow your dreams kids

[freakinator]

i need to get crazier about zamdoons i think

[finalgirlsamwinchester]

was meaning to write a serious and thoughtful meta on this shot as the show's first use of metatextual framing (a story within a story) linking its premise to the war movie as a genre (the show as a fascist gothic work) but yknow what. scratch all of that lmao. the only thought that matters is: the moment you really start thinking about the show as a reactionary post 9/11 power fantasy, you can't stop.

[scattered-winter]

there's something sooooooo heartbreaking about quests as a narrative piece. you set out on this journey to rescue someone or defeat a great evil and along the way you face hardship and horror and you grieve and fight and love and lose and then when it's all over you come home. everything is the same as when you left, but you're so irrevocably different that you no longer fit in the one place you used to be truly at peace. you're tired from your journey but you find no rest or recovery, only ghosts. and you almost wish for another quest, another dangerous mission, because at least then you know your purpose.