#and with that I'm caught up in my route writeups!

[fortune-maiden]

The Hundred Line: Comedy Route

DING DONG BING BON - wait can I still make that joke? xD

I was originally going to do two write ups for this since I was playing Comedy Route between other routes but then I finished it so....

The Meat

Generally when Things are happening this route can be really funny! And the Meat Path had some really good moments!

My favorite part: The Threatening Letters. I guessed the culprit behind them right away, but I love how Takumi takes this threat completely seriously which makes it difficult for the culprit to fess up later. And how he recruits the twins to help him solve the case! Finally Kako and Ima get plot relevance again even if it's just for this nonsense. It's also cute how Ima figures things out pretty quickly, while Kako keeps pouring oil on the fire. It's very cute (though I do also miss the more insightful Detective Kako from Route 0 too)

Takumi refusing to steal Hiruko's panties so he just goes on a fetch quest to make his own. And that's how I unlocked the final gift in the Gift-O-Matic.

The Try Not to Laugh Challenge: I feel like this was the weaker of the Meat branches, though I do appreciate how we skipped like 30 days of it! It was completely sudden and unexpected but I'm not going to complain about skipping Comedy Route days!

I am also alskfjslakfdjs at Sirei casually revealing Karua does not exist in a scenario where you have no time or reason to process this information before we skip to Day 100 and it's nonsense endings. Takumi and Sirei may think these are the worst endings ever but I disagree. It was hilarious!

All the Meta humor in general is fun here

The Affection Path? Idk what to call this one but it also wasn't actually that great but it had some fun highlights. Namely...

Ten. Day. Yuri. Discussion.

It was just too funny! xD

The way we also just SKIP the Dahl'xia and V'ehxness battles because of Tsubasa's inventions had me in stitches. Why did the Skip Battle pop up even show up here! There is no battle in the first place!

We needed this invention in Serial Battles! xD

While I think the other endings were funnier, I love the CG for Takumi completely utterly rejected by Nozomi

The Fish

My first Comedy Route branches actually! I did the Super Smartass Syndrome path ages ago, and I think it's still my favorite of the Comedy Route paths because of just how silly it is, and because of how many days we get to skip because of Takumi exploding sometimes.

I think the theme of this path is Takumi the Straight Man. His deadpan line deliveries in this one are the best they've ever been and we really have so much absurd humor here that it's great!

The No Voices arc is a little dull because it's just drawn out Free Days with minimal plot but I like how it translates to no Battle Dialogue and ends with Sirei giving everyone tablets and Darumi pranking everyone with chain letters. That can all be forwarded to Gaku resulting in Super Smartass Syndrome.

Or can result in the Terminal Mackerel-Headitis path which is simultaneously the most absurd and most monotonous part of Comedy Route. We slowly get to watch Takumi's sanity decay day by day and also so many fish puns!

The Fish Heads are also conveniently removable when necessary because we don't have fish head battle models.

Allegedly Takumi does have a fish head model though, but I never did explorations while he was fish-headed so can someone confirm this???

Also the scallop headed enemies were an absolute riot. Seriously the line deliveries in this path were something else!

Also also, I am so sorry Dahl'xia & V'ehxness. You were completely destroyed this route xD

The endings here are also very certainly endings!

The Potatoes

Sigh... I think anyone who's played this route knows this. This route's pacing is a mess. It's a fun silly route with a nonsense plot but the nonsense plot is broken up by many days where nothing happens. It feels like this route exists to ensure players have enough free times to get all the bonding events/explorations/etc done without needing to repeat routes, but it's also just too much. I think the Terminal Mackerel-Headitis route is especially bad about this. I think it really says something that my more enjoyed routes are the ones that involved a lot of skipped days

This Route, alongside Box of Calamity, really made me start to hate the DING DONG BING BONG chime. Thankfully it's skippable as of v1.0.6 but I only got this update mid-Meat route. I suffered through all of Fish without this skip! xD

On another note, I'm not sure how to feel about this route being the one relatively timeline shenanigans free route of the Kill Eito timeline. And even then it's not since I'm pretty sure to get this route, alt timeline Takumi/Hiruko inject Takumi with the G'ie cure to prevent the Slasher Route

(I do wish we could have had 1 serious Kill Eito route that was completely free of timeline shenanigans just to see how the team could have come together in the absence of their beloved saboteur. Something something 2nd Scenario Adjacent but without Eito to help push us towards the Truth...)

But really... this route is best enjoyed in small doses. It's funny, but in the crackfic kind of way, and a chore to actually play. I feel like I generally enjoyed Casual Route a lot more as a comedy focused route. The comedy there made a lot more sense and also served a very specific purpose...

The pre-Meat/Fish route split was also kind of forgettable. I mostly remember Takumi being a jerk to FB more than anything else ^^"

I did like the quiz that seemed to rely on your knowledge of bonding events though!

[sapphim]

so I don't think I've ever really sat down and done a full writeup of my canon multiwarden worldstate, and it's been a hot minute since I've posted bits and pieces of it, so I'm gonna do this as a series of posts until I lose interest and stop abruptly partway thru ☺️

first, the origins~ or, one of them, anyway~

Duncan's hoping to find a few more good Warden recruits on this tour of Ferelden, but his main impetus for this trip in particular is because he has reached out to Orzammar about a venture into the Deep Roads to confirm the Blight has started, and he has received word back that the Wardens are, of course, formally invited, and they'll throw their honored guests a party while they're there. So Duncan and a few other wardens—including Alistair, who has only recently undergone the Joining and not done much Warden stuff beyond scouting in the Korcari Wilds around Ostagar—make the journey to Orzammar.

Duncan purposefully chooses a route that will take them past Kinloch Hold, and sends the other wardens to travel ahead to Orzammar to start getting things set up while he takes a quick detour at the Circle.

Bound in Blood and Magic

The three OCs of interest here are Rowan, Rafael, and Spiro Amell.

Rowan is an apprentice at the Circle. She's ~17 years old, nearly six feet tall, and half-elven, albeit not very visibly. She was raised in the Gwaren Alienage, where she assumes her mother still resides. She's friendly and extraverted but also gangly and awkward. In a kinder world she'd be sporty. She attaches herself to Jowan and Lily's plot to destroy their phylacteries and flee the Circle early and eagerly.

Rafael [Surana] is ~20 and a lil nerd who just passed his Harrowing with flying colors, although his aspirations to study spirit healing under Wynne have been dampened as she's been recently dispatched to Ostagar. He's a bright student and believes in the promises of the system���that by excelling scholastically he can overcome any prejudice introduced into the meritocracy from external sources. He seized the opportunity to reinvent himself with a new identity when he was brought to the Circle at a young age, and they've provided support for his gender transition. He's got a nerdy lil elven boyfriend, Eadric, he's been seeing on the dl. He's pretty content with his lot in life and he really doesn't want to confront anything that could ruin this for him.

When Jowan approaches Rafael about his fears about being made tranquil, Rafael 100% believes Jowan's in a conspiracy theory-fueled anxiety-spiral, and relays his concerns to First Enchanter Irving, who manipulates Rafael into giving up more about Jowan's plan than he intended and extracts an agreement that Rafael will monitor his escape attempt for him. Raf will spend the rest of the origin trying anxiously and unsuccessfully to talk Jowan out of the escape without giving away his role in the ordeal.

Spiro Amell, being in his early 30s, is in Anders' cohort rather than that of the elder apprentices. He's another Circle success story: attractive, clever, but most importantly charming. Academically he's coasting somewhat, but socially he's popular, he's likable, and he refuses to get tied down in fraternity politics. Being from a noble family, even a disgraced and foreign one, has absolutely started him with a leg up in the Circle hierarchy that most other mages would have to fight tooth and nail for. He is extremely chill and easy-going, and he doesn't make it a habit to make waves, though he's not unwilling to spend the social capital he's accumulated to help out a fellow mage.

Jowan & co. are not being as subtle as they think they are, and not nearly as subtle as they should be, which is how Spiro gets involved. He can't talk them out of it, but he might be able to keep them from getting themselves killed and dampen any fallout should they get caught. It's definitely not the first time he's assisted someone else's escape attempt.

Spiro may get a little bit uncharacteristically clumsy and in the basement while Jowan and Rowan are taking too long to locate their own phylacteries and Rafael is anxiously unraveling his own robes thread by thread in the corner of the room and—oops, aw dang, there goes an entire shelf. Let's skedaddle, fellas. The Circle won't have completed sorting that mess out by the time Uldred enacts his takeover of the Tower later.

When they emerge, they're confronted by First Enchanter Irving, Knight Commander Greagoir, and a host of templars. Raf's outed as a snitch. Jowan reveals his blood magic and flees. When everyone else comes to, Spiro, Rowan, and Lily are groggily and unceremoniously escorted away to the dungeon to be held until a fitting punishment can be enacted. Rafael is absolutely losing his shit over what he's learned about Irving deliberately entrapping apprentices with blood magic and setting them up to fail. Greagoir would like to completely disregard the amnesty Rafael was promised and haul him off the same as the others, even though he was acting entirely under orders from Irving, and Raf's attitude is not helping. This is when Duncan—who was pretty impressed when he spoke with Rafael earlier in his visit—steps in and conscripts him out from under them.

Duncan and Rafael—after a very brief moment for Raf to grab his things and wake Eadric to say goodbye—leave the Tower and make their way to Orzammar, arriving only a day or two after the other Wardens.

(Not long after this, Anders will take advantage of the chaos caused by Uldred's rebellion to spring Spiro and Rowan from the dungeons in the process of his own escape. The three of them will spend the duration of the Blight engaging in shenanigans just slightly off-screen from wherever the main action is located.)

Next up! Orzammar and the Deep Roads.