Check out my ongoing comic Crow Time. It has crows, and also neat pantheons of epic beasties.

A moment of light during the siege

part three of the cursed emoji collection except it’s from me this time and also very late

There are some characters I’m so defensive of that I unfollow blogs for being wrong about them like I do not need your terrible opinions in my life

Tumblr in December 2022 be like

Kevin Conroy on Inside of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum [ x ]

How important decisions were made in the pack

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Guess whose idea it was

dragon age brain dump

just replayed the entire Dragon Age series in its entirety and 1000+ hours later i have a few Probably Unpopular Thoughts mostly about Dragon Age: Inquisition:

DA: Origins has the best — if not most basic — story. A classic hero’s tale with some great stories that flesh out both the world of Thedas and the people living in it. It’s both easy to understand and very engaging to the point where I was sad to move on. Also the companion interactions were just chef’s kiss levels of wonderful.

Dragon Age II doesn’t have a weak story, per say. Rather, it’s much, much smaller and therefore a far more intimate and nuanced one. The struggles we hear about/see a bit of in DA:O are all put under a microscope in this one, giving way to a setting that is limited in scope but far more defined and influenced by the people within it. You have a greater sense of just how much the religion-based politics of Thedas impact mages, elves, and the poor, and it’s both uncomfortable and deeply engrossing.

Having a singular character in Hawke over the many choices of DA:O and DA:I was actually a brilliant idea and I truly wish they had continued Hawke as the PC into Inquisition. As the Warden and the Inquisitor, the games provide more in the way of vague and limited reactions and interactions for your character, making it awkward when human characters start explaining elven culture to your Proudly Dalish character. This issue is especially bad in Inquisition, which really does feel like they don’t want you to play anything that’s not human.

As Hawke, the pool is significantly more limited, allowing your companions to offer a sense of truly knowing your character based on how you play them. Hawke has an established family and background and it’s both known and recalled often enough to make you feel like all the characters actually exist outside of the immediate plot. It also makes way more sense to have characters explain stuff to a solidly human Hawke who’s spent the last few years in the Free Marches, relatively isolated from Ferelden and Orlais and the goings on in the two nations.

Coming back on background choices… DA:I is the absolute worst for it. None of the backgrounds matter beyond a few small, unimportant dialogue choices and a couple 10+ hour war table instances. NPCs will in fact still explain your own character’s culture to you, as if the game was built more with just a human in mind. I loved Morrigan in DA:O but having her talk down to my Dalish Inquisitor pushed me right into saying Fuck You, Lady, Who The Fuck Do You Think You Are outloud multiple times. I remain firm in my belief Inquisition should have been a continuation of Hawke’s story, as the Herald makes absolutely no sense to me otherwise — especially with regards to Corypheus and Varric’s presence. (By the way, Varric was way more interesting and fun in DAII than Inquisition and I will not be elaborating further.)

AND BY THE WAY? At this point in time, it’s a red flag to me when someone hates Anders and condemns his actions and/or kills him. You’re gonna play two whole games worth of reasons the Chantry sucks ass and is a tool used to oppress and mutilate mages and still say violence wasn’t the answer? yiiiikes

And after 300 hours of playtime after having not played it since 2014, I can say that Inquisition is by far the weakest and laziest of the three. I deeply dislike this game, no matter how many times I replay it or what kind of Inquisitor I play. The Inquisition itself is a terrible idea — a religious organization created specifically to ignore and override the laws of whatever land they choose to be on, where all of the decision making comes down to one idiot who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe it’s my own religious trauma speaking, but I truly and genuinely despise the Inquisition and I can never commit to a playthrough as an Andrastian, even though my Wardens are typically a human noble or city elf who believes ardently in the Maker. It’s gross and creepy and it makes me feel fucking weird, especially when the game crawls up its own ass with the self-righteous themes.

I am also deeply frustrated that DA:I feels like it spends a lot of time shrugging off or being weirdly condescending about the events of the previous games, as if it needs to downplay the previous two entries to justify its own existence. The Grey Wardens get reduced to a shambling corpse of a group that easily falls for a dumb trick and gets unceremoniously shoved off into irrelevance while everyone loudly talks about how we don’t even need them anyway, regardless of the outcome of your DA:O playthrough. The Mage Rebellion that Anders is largely responsible for kicking off gets mostly attributed to someone else and is treated as little more than a minor inconvenience before the mages are potentially also “tricked” into serving Corypheus. Or, if you choose to recruit them, get treated like they’re all timebombs and you’re an idiot for trusting them or even wanting to free them from the Chantry. Hawke’s part in the game is… fine? I guess? But serves as little more than a cameo and only ensures I will always leave Stroud behind. 

The companions of DA:I are also, in my opinion, the weakest of the bunch. Other than Dorian, Bull, and Cassandra, I can’t say I especially cared about, well, any of my companions in Inquisition. At least, not the same way I cared about my companions in DA:O or DAII. I barely made an effort for Blackwall and Vivienne but Cole and Sera not giving a shit about me was such a nonissue to me that I often forgot they existed. It was actually more satisfying to me that by the events of Trespasser Sera barely acknowledged me and called me a shit. And Varric… was just kind of boring outside of his interactions with Cassandra.

Like, lmao, fuck it really didn’t feel like anyone liked each other or even feel necessary, which is such a weird feeling to have about companions, especially when you don’t get a choice in some of them. I wish the game had spent more time fleshing out the companions and less time tearing down the previous games to justify itself. 

I liked Josephine but both Leliana and Cullen feel like wildly different characters, with the former feeling especially hollow until I chose her as Divine. Until then, she was just so far away from the wonderful, caring character I’d enjoyed in DA:O that it was kind of heartbreaking. She felt like a Zack Snyder retelling at times with how goddamn dark she was.

And speaking of Trespasser: Solas is easily both the most interesting and the most frustrating character in the series. My least hated playthrough was with a Dalish mage elf who romanced him and the way everything turns out with Solas makes it feel like the closest to what I’d call a satisfying story arc. Watching how he dances between the lines and skillfully avoids direct confirmation or denial of his actions and who he really is is genuinely interesting, but at times it felt like the writers weren’t confident enough in their ability to bury the hints adequately so the hints come so few and far between that the twist doesn’t feel like a twist as much as it feels like a random character jump.

I mean, pretend to be surprised when I say I just really don’t like Inquisition, no matter how many times I play it. So much that it largely sours my opinion on the series as a whole because I couldn’t help the occasional “ah what does it matter what I do here? Inquisition will just retcon/ignore it anyway” thought. The bad engine, the ugly armor designs, the generally unimpressive world design (and don’t even get me started on Val Royeaux like holy shit all that build up for a glorified marketplace???? I’m DEAD), the weird character choices, the frustrating gameplay mechanics... like the whole thing was just such a weird fever dream. And knowing that it getting Game of the Year pretty directly made it responsible for both Anthem and Mass Effect: Andromeda’s failures is hilariously ironic.

All this rambling to say I really loved Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II, but all that love was actively drained from me while I played Inquisition and I will never not be mad about it. And since this is my dumb blog that no one reads I can ramble about it here.

like your blog but no offense how are you on Tumblr in ur late 20s?

Good question anon! Here’s my secret: the old folks home lets us out for an hour of water aerobics every day and while the other residents are huffing and puffing like a bunch of suckers I’m off to the side of the pool with everything I need for posting quality content to Tumblr Dot Com.

WE ARE BRINGING THESE POSTS BACK BAYBEEEEEEE

oh, darling, what have i done?

BLACK WIDOW (2021), dir: Cate Shortland. What you experienced was psychological conditioning. I’m talking about chemically altering brain functions. They’re two completely different things.

#milf

bonus:

Birds of Prey + male fragility reviews (insp.)

seriously 😭 

Babygirl I know fandom history that you wouldn’t even care about