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felassan · 11 months

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remember that wild Dragon Age theme park ride (Dragon Age: Flight of the Wardens), originally located in Dubai until it randomly turned up years later (now also oddly-rebranded as "[Not Dragon Age We Swears It]: The Guardian") in, of all places, Skegness England? well, I had to satisfy my curiosity and obsession with obscure pieces of Dragon Age media & archival thereof. and so - actually quite some time ago now - I finally got around to going on a pilgrimage there (which was this whole, like.. heinous harrowing in and of itself, that I will not go into), and I rode it

and to my surprise the original Dragon Age in-ride movie is still part of the ride experience! - complete with references to darkspawn, a Pride demon, dragons, green "rifts", Discount Anders (a Grey Warden[?] mage called 'Eldron'), Discount Yavanna (a Witch of the Wilds called 'Alexia') and Dragon Age: Inquisition soundtrack music. there is also now a new pre-ride movie which replaces the old Dragon Age pre-ride movie as part of the ride's rebranding, and i simply ?¿?

there are also still quite a lot of identifiable Dragon Age props in the fantasy-themed queue-area of the ride (so these must have been part of the whole purchase between parks), including multiple iconic Inquisitor helmets, Grey Warden shields, a Dragon Age dragon (now with DA-dragon identifiable horns.. sawn off??), and several Dragon Age banners, including the Inquisition hairy eyeball, the templar symbol and the Circle symbol. here's some pictures.

[^this image is taken from the video linked below]

I also captured the new pre-ride movie, and you can see it along with the Dragon Age in-ride movie here ⬇️. and so now, with this epilogue to the.. most odyssey of all time, more than two years after the first message about the ride was ever sent to Ghil Dirthalen, this adventure in obscurity and the strange fever-dream meta story of the Dragon Age: Flight of the Wardens era in Dragon Age history is finally complete.

youtube

Ghil Dirthalen: The Guardian??? {Overview. - Spoilers All}

[video source & link: Ghil Dirthalen, posted here w/ permission]

some further notes, thoughts and commentary under the cut -

there's a few seconds missing from this capture of the in-ride movie. for the sake of the curious and completion: in them, you're still in the fort and you see lots of 'Wardens' walking and milling around.

a camera in the ride takes two photos of the riders during the ride, which are displayed on a screen on the way out. you can choose to buy these from the Fantasy Island merchandise store. you know those photos of people on log flume rides? it's like those, only of the four riders in a row in the seats. the photos have Fantasy Island branding on them and fire along the bottom, then in two corners there's a bit of a dragon's head and that's about it. the ride photo is the only Guardian-specific merch available at the park.

some of the queue area props appear to be from random other places. like there was a barrel which had something like "1850 distillery" written on it, which is obviously temporally/thematically and universe-ly out of place (not that that's at all unreasonable given the rest of the rideworld lore, there's totally a way it could have gotten there easily hh, see below), and I guess it's a spare or leftover prop from a Western-themed ride or something? others were generic sword'n'sorcery fantasy props (some of these are from the ride's previous life in Dubai though). there are also some pretty random props, like a dead stuffed roe deer's head on the wall and a.. comically large spoon.

there's music playing in the queue area, but it's not DA music, it's generic ye olde fantasy world music.

some folks there mistakenly thought that the long themed lead-up (it was pretty darn long) queue area with the props was the entrance to or start of something completely different, like a haunted house or maze type thing, or was the ride 'experience' in and of itself.

the ride attendant gives you the option of watching the new pre-ride movie or not. I guess they get sick of putting it on and listening to it 9000 times a day (valid), and also cutting it out reduces queue times as it's about five minutes long. it's screened in a little enclosed room at the end of the queue area. you go in and sit down, they show it to you, then you go through another door to the chair machine.

the in-ride movie is blurry and poor quality. I heard someone else who rode it say that it was so blurry that they had no idea what was going on hhh

Now about the new pre-ride movie. in the linked video, the start of the new pre-ride movie isn't included in full at normal speed as it seemed to be a compilation of whatever random fantasy-themed stock footage the video creator could find, stitched together. but again for the curious and the sake of completion: it starts out panning randomly around SPACE, like at the solar system and of planets and at the Milky Way. for a sec I wondered if it was made up of random old Mass Effect assets. then it shows dragons (FROM SPACE) invading an Earth-like planet where I suppose the Ferelden-y kindgom (formerly called "Noathen", now called "Elvia" or something) setting in the rideworld is now supposed to be set. these invading dragons invade either from space or.. another dimension?? or maybe from the future or both?? [see below], entering through a big green rift. (and they still have the green coloring for the rifts and call it/them "rifts" like in DA, which was honestly so funny to me for some reason). the whole panning in from space start to the movie reminded me a lot of the Easter eggs in the DA and ME games that, while they're just Easter eggs for fun and I don't subscribe to this theory myself (as DA is its own great, self-contained thing), could light-heartedly imply that the planet with Thedas on it is a planet in the MEverse (like the krogan head in the Winter Palace in DAI or the ogre in that ME dlc).

in the pre-ride movie, the kingdom of "Elvia" might have actually been called "Albion", which is the earliest-known name for the island of Britain. (it was hard to make out exactly what the king was saying there) the new pre-ride movie seems like it was made in England and ofc thats a common fantasy setting, so I could see it, especially since the king character's name was something like Aethylswyth, which sounded very "Old English". for me personally, if it was "Albion", it adds fuel to the fire of Caitie's cracktheory/"trying to make this fit"-headcanon for the ride story/lore (see Caitie's original video on the ride's previous life for this), that it's set somewhere obscure and backwatery in Ferelden, which is kinda England- or Britain-inspired. (dont take these thoughts or other thoughts in this post about the lore/canon etc too srsly pls hh, it's just crack for fun and I know tis just an off-brand themepark ride)

on the whole the new pre-ride movie is pretty random. there's a giant in it, but it doesn't look like a DAI giant. (is it his big spoon??) it shows a fortress in part of it which looks a bit like Skyhold if you squint, with the long bridge approaching it as the entrance. at one point one of the dragons that pops up is a dragon designed more in the style of a dragon as they are sometimes depicted in, for example, Chinese mythology and folklore. the "communication device" the king described had me rolling, it's exactly like a Dragon Age Skype Crystal or a working set of eluvians from Thedas.. I wondered if the video creator was inspired some by DAI promo images and took cues from the Inquisitor's green hand/the Anchor, since the king has a green glowing thing on (or in?) his chest. and when the king started listing the elements humans are made of, I was reminded of Fullmetal Alchemist.

also, "through a time rift".. I mean technically Dorian's involvement in DAI DOES show green space-time magic right? Where is this other dimension? ofc I know it's not literally Dragon Age, but it's funny to think about and to try and make it "fit" skhskdhfjhe. is it the Fade? the Void? from somewhere in-between like Tevinter Nights implies exists? or is it the dimension which has Thedas's mundane world itself in it - like maybe the dragons are invading this poor guy's kingdom dimension from Thedas? if so what tf is going on in Thedas?? did Solas' explosion at the Conclave ripple through spacetime and rip holes in the fabrics of other worlds as well - like is Solas out here accidentally causing interdimensional Space Dragon invasions? like, theoretically.. the new pre-ride move does reference the in-ride movie, and in turn the in-ride movie is still Dragon Age (!), so technically the new pre-ride movie IS.. kind of.. weirdly.. canon.

((the pre-ride movie references an "outerworld", implying that even in THAT dimension there's an outer world and an inner world, definitely more than one at least. and back on the dimensions thing, I'm not clear - are the dragons coming from Thedas dimension? or are they coming to Thedas dimension? "they came through the rift, human in form but with powers, the ability to fly [that's Eldron] and the ability to transform into dragon-like creatures [that's Alexia]" implies that the dimension on the other side of the rift - if the helpers came through the same rift as the invading dragons - is Thedas, because that's Eldron and Alexia from the Dragon Age in-ride movie being referred to, and Noathen where they're from is in Thedas somewhere. so some Thedosians have travelled to another world to save it?? Dragons are escaping out of Thedas? but.. from space? but also - the narration is telling us that Eldron and Alexia and the other Guardians brought with them from where they came from, as a gift, incredible advanced technology that the people of Elvia have never seen before. he then gives the example of "this communication device" which could be read meta-ly as meaning the television screen, and of plans to build a machine made of metal and advanced technology (meaning the ride machine you go sit on, which is a themepark machine irl obviously and in the 'world' of the ride, some kind of flying machine). so like.. are Eldron and Alexia from Future Thedas (think Avatar Aang/Korra, when by Korra's time there's like lots more machinery and a more modern feel), a Thedas which has advanced complex machines like idk, AEROPLANES? is that what they mean by "time-rift"? because they specifically did say "time". is that to try and explain the modern machinery? does that mean the invading dragons also came from the future, not just from space or another dimension? the other option: Eldron and Alexia came from alternate universe Thedas, which has more modern technology in it. but Thedosians Time-Travelling From The Future And Also Space And Another Dimension is so funny to me so lets go with that. my headcanon is that on the way to Elvia they also timetravelled through a Westernthemed time period and thats why theres a recent-modern period whisky barrel)).

in the ride's previous life, the explanatory hook was that Eldron made you a special harness or saddle thing with which to ride a dragon, which was what the ride machine was simulating. however now, the hook to explain the machine is that it's a gift of advanced technology powered by carbon, hydrogen, organic matter (Big Oil lmao?) etc. (I enjoyed that this explanatory hook got wackier between eras of the ride's life, much like the whole meta story of this piece of media itself. it was already weird because riding dragons isn't really part of DA. though I don't understand meta-ly speaking this convoluted explanation for the machine. dragon-riding isn't an identifiable or key part of the Dragon Age franchise, so they could have kept the idea that you're sitting on a dragon's back and flying around on that in instead of having this wacky explanation about a flying machine gifted from magical strangers from Back To The Future and it would have been fine. I love it though bc its so absurd)

And Tiny Dragon Alexia from the original ride experience is kinda referenced (unintentionally?) when the king introduces the dragon "Guardian" "Mia", as when she comes on-screen her size or scaling looks small/kinda off, so maybe Tiny Dragon lives on. so now we have Tiny Dragon Alexia, Tiny Dragon Mia, and Tiny Dragon queue prop. it's a Tiny Dragon Conference.

and like I just have so many questions. in her original video on the ride, Ghil Dirthalen wondered at length where in Ferelden/Thedas Noathen could be. where is Elvia? why does the pov of the pre-ride movie proceed downstairs into the room where the king is - like why does the king have his throne in a basement? is he in an underground bunker for safety because of the Space Dragon invasion? why does he say we "climbed" up when we have just gone down into his dungeon? why is the tiny dragon introduced as "Mia" when the tiny dragon witch lady in the in-ride movie is called "Alexia"? does the king's green glowing chest thing work like the Anchor - does he have a chest Anchor.. a Chanchor? where did they get Discount Gandalf from the queue area and why is he exactly like the Ghil Dirthalen Stock Theatre Wizards in her original video? why did they change the kingdom's name from "Noathen" to "Elvia" in the pre-ride movie when "Noathen" was already non-existent in Dragon Age lore? why did they scrub Dragon Age from or avoid Dragon Age in the pre-ride movie but leave the whole Dragon Age in-ride movie intact? are the "Guardians" Discount Grey Wardens? is the king's whole schpeel secretly an evil plot so he that can use our bodies for like necromancy-alchemy? why does the ride run on your flesh and are we about to be sacrificed in a blood magic ritual? do we end up like the husks in Mass Effect after our organic forms are broken down into compounds to fuel the King of Elvia's flying anti-dragon defense tank? is the actor of the king a park staffer who is into larping, or someone's fun nerd uncle who likes DnD? does Caitie not in fact agree that I am very handsome and smart, indeed the World's Most Interesting Guy? 😤 why go to the trouble of sawing off the dragon's DA-dragon horns when the in-ride movie is still Dragon Age?? why are the dragons invading from space anyway like what do they want??? how can I obtain the king actor guy's autograph? where are EA's lawyers? and why is there a giant spoon?

#dragon age #Not Dragon Age We Swears It #bioware #solas #video games #lul #long post #longpost #gpoy #mj and the world #saveserault #mass effect #(shoutout to the DA Archivists)#thanku to ghil for her vids and for permission to post this video here #this whole episode in my life and in the DA fandom feels like a strange shared fever dream. was that real? am i? is Skegness? is DA4? r WE?#lmaoo #skegness the swampy ass crack of england #Fantasy Island - where dreams go to die (but fever dreams live on)#(cant believe one of the pretend Wardens from Ghil Dirthalen's Eldron's fake Warden cult was literally there irl at Fantasy Island. im ded)#and if u are reading this thinking wat the heck fel r u ok its just a rebranded themepark ride like calm down its not That Deep #i grasp ur collar and raise you that #in the time between dai and DA:D i have fully lost my mind #what dragon age does to a guy #while we wait for dragon age 4 this is the plot of dragon age 4 #on my knees constructing elaborate headcanons about and trying to make sense of a Not dragon age theme park ride #surrealism.txt

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brother-emperors · 6 months

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you're SO right, how is it that the best portrayal of many italian renaissance figures comes from a bad videogame from the 2010s

wheezing I’m torn between going truly this is the best portrayal of Leonardo da Vinci we may ever get, and defending AC2 even though I’m a full time Ezio Saga Hater

#I’m a Desmond Era + Origins fan in a ride or die kind of way but the Ezio games suck ass compared to 1 and 3 #however AC2 is miles above the European Era games and Odyssey butchers the use of Ezio’s theme so bad I will never forgive them #also Odyssey is legitimately bad. AC2’s biggest problem is that the story is narratively weak and holds it’s punches #I mostly hate the Ezio saga because the fandom was really fucking racist (still is!) and it could’ve been good!!!#but I have a deep seated fondness for the parts of it that were good. the game after all is still asking you to live even when it’s hard #the opening and the music are unparalleled and legendary. I just wish it kept that up throughout the story instead of #trying for a wider appeal but the story fucks up it’s own themes and bc the simplicity of it’s assassin/templar line up is baffling #there is also an AC2 that exists in my head that takes place in Venice lmao but that’s much more spy thriller #also did anyone here read the novelizations. Ezio and Machiavelli are so fucking married. 10/10 no notes #Ascanio is also mentioned in the brotherhood novelization iirc so. we stay winning!!

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skellagirl · 10 months

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#danny phantom #dpxdc #Yes this is a silly poll. it's fandom. it's not that deep #and I'm not hugely involved with the dp fandom like. as a group. I have my moots and that's all I want #so I don't have a huge stake in this either way #BUTTTTTT EVEN SO the lack of tagging etiquette from the dpxdc fandom is a pain in the ass #literally just don't tag ur shit with danny phantom. it's not hard. they're two different fandoms.#do that one (1) easy thing and boom. peace and love on planet earth #the dp and dpxdc fandoms can hold hands and frolic and kiss each other with tongue like God intended without stepping on each other's toes #and encroaching on each other's space #BADA BING BADA BOOM problem solved and it only took what? eleven seconds?#also I am fully aware that this isn't like some scientifically bulletproof way to collect data bc it can beel easily skewed #even just by like one person with a dozen alt side accounts or something #but I was just :) curious :)))))#fuck it we ball #if anyone from either side comes at me with drama I'm just gonna straight-up ignore it btw this isn't worth getting worked up over #and I'm Not letting anyone drag me into fandom drama

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bitwynn · 1 year

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so i was talking with my friend abt like-- genshin lore and it got to the subject of forbidden knowledge and stuff

and she used this analogy of it being a computer virus or a corrupted file that cant be processed properly

which then made me think "ahaha yes SAGAU IDEA--"

so what if... the forbidden knowledge was the fact that the world is a game/simulation? and since the world of genshin is a computer program, it wasnt built to handle the realization of the nature of its existence and like-- processed it as eleazar, and "forbidden knowledge" and its other effects on the world

eleazar is the system like-- turning it into the safest thing the program can handle and leaving it to the gods (rukk and desh) to try and fully put a stop to it like anti-virus-- the program is only running the world, not the beings and people in it, so itd make sense for them to stop it since when the world is ending and you can do something about it, youd probably do something about it--

since rukk and desh were gods and therefore much "closer" to the games code/programming (closer in the sense that they were much more directly tied/connected to it-- esp rukkha because of irminsul), they were able to handle the realization in a sense-- like... they knew that they werent "real" in some sense and knew that this knowledge is slowly killing them and their deaths to the knowledge that "they werent real" is inevitable and that-- in a way, the eleazar is one of the safest ways for people to handle the knowledge-- that even the world is protecting them from the ruin of it

i imagine the way the two gods processed the information was like-- thru the "corruptive qualities of forbidden knowledge" and in fragmented parts. its why i said that they only knew that they werent "real" and not that they knew that theyre a video game world-- kind of in the same vein of practically every harbinger going "the sky is fake let me tell you about it" (proceeds to not tell you about it) (dottore i love you but im still mad about it)

but if the "forbidden knowledge" is knowledge about how youre not real because youre a video game and youre not supposed to be self aware of it, how then can the harbingers handle that information without going mad or constantly dying of eleazar? i mean-- in the both the manga and in the game its pretty explicitly said that like, dottore fully stopped colleis eleazar and practically cured her of it.

so... you know how they manage to keep altered information in the form of stories in scaramouches archon quest? i think a similar case happened here-- an allegorical story about people living in a fake reality, be it a dream or a story or something, was made to preserve this information. and since it wasnt the pure unadulterated truth about the nature of this worlds existence anymore, the program could handle it and keep anyone from reading it suffering the negative effects of forbidden knowledge

pierro probably did it tbh-- in the archon quest, it was said that the events of khaenriah and the events leading to the deaths of king deshret and rukkhadevata are similar, if not exactly the same.

so how can we then tie this into SAGAU? are you still with me? did you completely forget that this is about me bullshitting the games lore so much to fit this really specific genre of genshin fandom stuff so you can make content about it? have you forgotten i write SAGAU fics? ...honestly i cant blame you for that last one if you did, i havent been writing SAGAU fic in a WHILE LMAO

ANYWAYS--

the concept of "forbidden knowledge" being used in SAGAU is really interesting which is why im writing abt it in the first place lmao-- and the concept is uber fun so this is just me helping you fit this into your own fics and fanworks

since the "forbidden knowledge" is literally just like "youre a computer program and youre not supposed to know that", y/n would DEFINITELY be able to handle it without the adverse effects. and i know that y/n is basically the equivalent of a mary sue at this point and it physically hurted me when i started writing y/n fics but-- if you think abt it, it makes sense

i am trying so hard rn to like-- not turn this into a discussion about mary sues-- just watch OSPs video on the subject and youre golden lmao

it makes sense for y/n to be able to handle it because number one: y/n is literally us. y/n is not lines of code in a program. y/n is never supposed to end up inside a program or software, and is DEFINITELY SUPER AWARE OF THE FACT THAT GENSHIN IS NOT REAL.

y/n is a human, or at least was a human before they got isekaied or whatever plot thing you decide to do to put y/n in the genshi world. y/n is human, not programming and can definitely handle the thought of "youre not real, youre a game". (lmao it could also really make for some good introspection and/or angst moments where they could philosophize about themselves now that theyre in the game, and the nature of pataphysics and all that fun stuff lmao)

i feel like-- you could also use this as like, a sort of leverage thing? to prove that you are who you say you are and, if this is impostor au, you could use it to your advantage as well in more aggressive ways-- not just as a "prove that youre the one above us all" situation but as a sort of self defence thing-- like when scara and dottore were both talking about the sky being fake thing

obviously youd be immune to eleazar and the madness of the forbidden knowledge caps and the other adverse effects-- BUT you could also inflict those things to the people and the world around you. while other characters like the fatui and the gods could say "youre fake, the world isnt real", they wont inflict the bad stuff since its like they heard the info from a friend of a friend of a friend-- the knowledge has been filtered and purified and fragmented so much that it wont do anything-- its not the full unadulterated truth

but when y/n says it, thats when it inflicts the adverse effects. its the difference between knowing something happened because you were there when it happened and witnessed it, and knowing something happened because you heard it happen from a friend who found out thru the internet. y/n fully knows the truth and intricacies of that statement on so many different levels than the characters can comprehend which is why they can do that.

i feel like it could depend with the volume and amount of people that heard-- like, if you scream it and a whole crowd hears you, the ones closest to you suffer the worst cases of eleazar ever recorded or EVEN DIE, and the severity just decreases the further it gets away from you. itd also be an instant withering zone or become something like the mud from the chasm

i also wanna say that you can "control" the spread in a way but like-- i dont see a way of making that happen tbh. if youre reading this and are getting inspo, go wild babes-- i believe in you, but i personally dont believe that y/n can control it. using the "computer virus" analogy, youd probably have to go into the essence of Teyvat itself to "delete that information" similarly to irminsul but different in the sense of like-- irminsul only put it in the recycle bin but youre going in the recycle bin, selecting all instances and deleting it. maybe you can bullshit it via leylines and abyss mage drops since they carry around leyline branches but i personally think that you just spew out forbidden knowledge, and have to go to irminsul itself to delete it

but yeah! thats my thoughs on Forbidden Knowledge in SAGAU and how it could fit into the world of the AU! making this actually like-- inspired me a bit to write again lmao-- theres just like, so many cool ass concepts in genshin that i dont see in this AU (probably because i havent been there in a while ;vjklldxfg) and i really hope you guys get inspired too :))

#but yeah lmao this is literally just me bullshitting lore so much to make it fit into-- at this point a whole ass genre of gensh content #if my friend sees this-- high probability of it happening btw-- hey man--#am i sorry that i turned our lore talk into genshin au bullshit?... nahhhhh #im just here to have fun and live my life lmao #and if that means desecrating lore to suit my own worldbuilding purposes? then so be it AHAHAHAH #but yeah!! it really like-- made we wanna deep dive into the lore again #both to use in fandom stuff and to just know #my thirst for knowledge will never be quenched ;CJKSDL;jVN #genshin impact #genshin #sagau #genshin sagau #genshin impact sagau #nic talks #genshin impact self aware #genshin self aware #genshin au

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heatherchasesyou · 11 months

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carnation-damnation · 2 months

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Some warmup sketches w Shatter

Bonus:

Amy Rascal "The Matchmaker" Rose you leave that poor boy alone

#im 14 and this is deep ass hedgehog #Shatter the Hedgehog #Anti Terios #god. it keeps going huh #curse of being in the utdr fandom is you make a billion aus for the rest of your life #sketches #sonic oc #amy rose #silver the hedgehog

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anachronistic-falsehood · 22 days

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tbh i am. RAPDILY losing interest in actively keeping up with qsmp. richas was one of the three things keeping me actively engaged, the other was cellbit and bagi and their lore, the other was fit and pac (+ mike obvi), and rn richas is leaving and cellbit and bagi appear to be on indefinite hiatus from the server. fit and pac u better fucking pull through for me ur my last got damn thread

#whiskey yelling into the void #grabbing fitmc by his bald ass head. do not fucking blow this for me florida man #i’m not leaving the fandom obvi i’m too deep in the trenches to leave #but i’mdef gonna start engaging w my other fandoms more #sanders sides i’m coming for u……

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monstersinthecosmos · 9 months

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As a fellow Marius lover, I always find it kind of disheartening how most of the content/fandom talk about him (meta, fic, fanart, etc.) revolves around m/m ships (Marius/Armand in particular but I’d even go as far to include Marius/Daniel here) when, in my opinion, Marius is like the one male character in the VC universe whose relationships with women are far more interesting than his relationships with other men (the only other character might be Lestat but even then it’s pretty 50/50). They’re so monumental and so full of complexities and pain and so much love and they define him and inform his character in ways that I think, his relationships with men simply do not. Interesting/hot under the right circumstances? Sure but like ARE YOU GUYS SEEING THIS MAN??? AND HOW HE RELATES TO WOMEN??? It’s one of the best things Anne ever wrote and I can never get enough of it and it makes me sad how little content there is of it and I feel I can never say this out loud because I would never want to make people feel bad about what they ship (truly not my intention here) but ugh SO MUCH potential there for life changing discourse and meta about Marius and the women he’s loved and lost and have shaped who he is and there’s like… nothing.

Tl;dr the reason I’m sending this ask is because I’m a firm believer that you must be the change you want to see in this world and because YOU get it! And every time you post or write about Marius/Pandora (or Marius/Akasha! Or talk about Marius/Bianca) an angel gets its (black) wings. You are seen, you are loved and appreciated tysm <3

OKAY FIRST OF ALL THIS WAS SUCH A DELIGHT TO GET IN MY INBOX, SECOND IM GOING TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST AND ADMIT I FEEL TOO INCOHERENT TO TACKLE THIS TOPIC HAHA. I don’t feel articulate enough to do it justice. And I don’t say that to be obnoxious and self deprecating but like in all honesty idk how to synthesize it neatly but I think you’re sharing some GREAT IDEAS.

I have to say this in bullet points because I don’t feel equipped to string this into a cohesive post:

Marius was based on Anne’s husband, and Marius/Pandora was based on their marriage!!!!! And I think it explains a lot about why their relationship feels so fuckin POTENT to me, like it’s so genuine!!!!!!! And like knowing that I think it makes sense why she wrote him so HOT lol. Like she’s just writing thirsty stuff about her husband right? LOL

Also like insofar as there’s a lot of genderfluidity in VC there’s also something vaguely misogynist about it at times. And Anne Rice was a mega feminist and her work had so much womens lib in it!!!!! So I don’t think it’s intended as misogyny at all vs. Anne having conversations about gender and maybe her own relationship to gender. I think enough characters have said vaguely misogynist stuff that it makes me think it’s an Anne Problem vs being Watsonian. (This is also a historical/time period issue and we can discuss another time if and when vampires are supposed to break out of that when they transcend humanity and social constructs even when they’re still saying weird sexist shit at their big ages.) But I say that to say all VC characters are a tad sexist, even if perhaps she was writing with the intention of her own male power fantasy/male superiority/penis envy. AND THAT MAKES MARIUS VERY INTERESTING.

Cause like really the three main ladies in his life (Akasha, Pandora, Bianca) DO define him so much! And we don’t see him pine for Armand the way he did for any of them! Why!!!

Like there’s that aspect of sexism where women can be infantilized by men who don’t think they’re being unkind and it makes me wonder, especially when the author is a boomer, like where is that line between condescension and respect? I don’t have an answer here, this is too big-brained for me LOL but like he is SO devoted to the women in his life and I just wonder like if he sees them as creatures unlike himself, you know?

This is headcanon territory but I bet he’s such a fucking sub to Pandora lol and it just thrills me that he spent 2000 years begging Akasha for affection and she ignored him the whole damn time wow. And he continued to simp!

AND ALSO LIKE, I think people DO NOT DISCUSS THIS OFTEN ENOUGH, but did we forget that he chose Armand because he needed a Bianca rebound? He was absolutely TORTURED by his love for Bianca and picked Armand because he didn’t want to kill her oh my god. Oh my god!!! HE KEPT HER LETTER IN HIS POCKET OVER HIS HEART OKAY??? HE DIDN’T WANT TO DRAG HER INTO HIS COLD AND FATAL DOMAIN????? Fuck lol

It’s so fucked up that he didn’t go after Armand but spent like actual fucking millennia trying to find Pandora. HE KNEW EXACTLY WHERE ARMAND WAS AND LEFT HIM THERE LOL BUT PANDORA HAUNTED HIM EVERY NIGHT OF HIS LIFE FOR CENTURIES.

After everything he wound up spending like 200 years with Bianca or something and ?????? CORRECT because Bianca was the fledgling he actually wanted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But it’s odd, I know I’ve said this 337589235 times, but Marius like. Has an idea of the person he wants to be and he tries SO HARD to live by logic & reason and he just can’t reconcile with the fact that he has EMOTIONS. And so like part of the person he wants to be like, open/empathetic/wise and he begs his lovers/students/fledglings to CHALLENGE HIM when he’s not actually healed enough to be challenged? And to me there’s something kinda like, extra spicy about it when you’re in Rice World and you’re a lil sexist; how much that burns EXTRA when it’s Pandora or Bianca sticking up to you or AKASHA FUCKIN IGNORING YOU.

Just really incredible that this person who is like the epitome of a patriarch has such fucked up relationships with all the women in his life. And like he underestimates these women, like the way he tries to manipulate Bianca and she leaves him! PANDORA AND AKASHA ARE UNAVAILABLE TO HIM AND BIANCA FUCKIN LEAVES.

akasSHA JUST IGNROING HIM!! JUST STRAIGHT UP FUCKIN IGNORING HIM FOR 2,000 YEARS!!!! HE'S OBSESSED WITH HER!

Anyway Enkil is ignoring him too but he doesn’t give a shit about that guy tbh lol

Also the amount of space he gives Eudoxia and Zenobia in his book like there’s more here too but tbh it’s midnight and I can’t start unpacking. I just think like, in 2000 years it’s interesting how Eudoxia wound up having such a lasting impact on his life.

I did just peek at the Eudoxia part and I’m dying, he goes “Her face was small, oval, and as close to perfection as anything I've ever beheld, even though she bore no resemblance to Pandora who was for me perfection itself.” CERTIFIED WIFE GUY.

What kinda mommy issues are we dealing with here? HIS MOTHER WAS A SLAVE THAT DIED IN CHILDBIRTH AND HE INHERITED HER GENES AND LOOKED LIKE HER AND DIDN’T LOOK LIKE HIS FATHER & BROTHERS? AND HE’S SORT OF AN OUTCAST AS A HUMAN LIKE ? THE STIGMA HERE? AND THEN HE SPENDS 2000 YEARS WORSHIPPING HIS NEW MOTHER??? PERHAPS YOU COULD SAY ENSLAVED TO HER? IDK MAN.

IS THIS ALSO WHY HE WAS SO OBSESSED WITH LOSING PANDORA?

The irony too, and something I think a lot of people miss, is that he DIDN’T WANT TO MARRY PANDORA LOL. He wanted to be betrothed to a child so that he could FUCK OFF and NOT get married because she wasn’t old enough to get married! He fucked off! He went exploring! He said this is not for me!

AND TO GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND BE MURDERED BY HIS MOTHERS PEOPLE???? IDK.

I’m not sure how these last two points tie into anything but I just wanted to mention his complicated relationship with Pandora and his own heritage lol. And then Akasha like DELIVERS Pandora to him because she’s like “wow this guy needs somebody lol and I am not emotionally available” — Akasha who was famously a violent genocidal radfem and who would not approve of his relationship with Armand but explicitly allowed him to have Pandora and Bianca. IDK WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN!

Did Akasha approve of these women because she knew Marius was completely pussywhipped and would worship them and she wanted to see someone mommydom the fuck out of him and she knew that Armand would never be that person? 🫢

And again I want to say like, taking the author into consideration!! Anne Rice had a HORRIFIC relationship with her mom so you see these themes pop up occasionally in her work. DESPITE ALL OF THAT SHE IS STILL A FEMINIST AND WRITES ABOUT MATRILINEAR FAMILIES like The Great Family or the Mayfairs. But thinking about Mothers in Anne Rice Works makes me think a lot about this like, the damage they can do and the voids they can leave even when you’re a feminist and love women! You see a TON of this with Gabrielle and I always think that Lestat & Marius are such similar characters that you can do a lot of extrapolating or backwards engineering to ask questions about them and how they work, since we get SO MUCH Lestat POV in this series to work with and how we can zoom out sometimes and ask like, what is common across her entire body of work and what is more specifically common between Lestat & Marius and WHAT EVEN MORE INTERESTINGLY is a result that they were both based on her husband in their inceptions.

Like how much of this has to do with Marius’s actual feelings towards men vs women on purpose, or how much was subconscious author bias, how much was simply that Anne Rice based him on her husband and she was THIRSTY, idk. It’s always hard to say in VC because Anne was such an intuitive and self-indulgent author and the stories are so weird!!! So your mileage may vary!

But I agree with you that these are FASCINATING relationships!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And I like Marius/Armand too (I recently made a post about how I didn’t “””””ship”””” them but then I spent 2 months working on a M/A fic every day and now I think I’ve corrupted and converted myself LMAO) but yeah like. There’s such a lack of substance between them in the end. He treats Armand like he’s temporary, fucks up and moves on, and it’s such a departure from how DEVOTED he was with all his other partners.

Wow I didn’t think I had a lot to say, sorry about that. !!! EVERY TIME I BROUGHT A POINT UP I THOUGHT OF 5 MORE POINTS GOSH I COULD TALK ABOUT MARIUS ALL DAY.

#tldr he has mommy issues #marius de romanus #vampire chronicles #thank you hekateinhell for discussing this with me in DM so that i could scream and yell and make sense of it!#hekate is mommy issues expert she helped unlock some bonus points!#deep ass thoughts about vampires #also i wanted to keep fandom discourse out of this bc i dont got time but this is like #such a timeless topic in fandom spaces about the popularity of mlm ships vs het or wlw ships #and like what that all means #it's been discussed to death and i don't think it's a condemnation of fandom at all #it just is what it is #so this is always going to be the case when it comes to fandoms & female characters #but i think people need to stop complaining about shit like that HAHA #fandom is a potluck yknow #like you gotta participate and make your own contributions too #marius is already such a divisive character i'm not gonna split hairs about who we're shipping him with LMAO THE POOL IS ALRAEDY TOO SHALLO #but i would love to put more bianca & pandora content into the world!!!#and like you i do not want this to sound like i'm being salty abotu what anyone ships! it's all good my dudes!#akasha #akasha/marius #bianca solderini #marius/bianca #pandora #marius/pandora

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