largemandrill

[largemandrill]

Ok I’m back anyway did you guys know I have Ocs.

Based off of this post

[largemandrill]

Mother and child training longsword in Chile, at the Centro Esgrima Histórica

[largemandrill]

what a lot of people don’t get when they’re making up varric nicknames is that he is NOT going to be creative or poetic just because he’s an author. you can’t go too hard or too symbolic and then expect me to believe it. he literally called isabela “rivaini”

[largemandrill]

I’ve gotta stop jokingly referring to being blonde as a flaw when it is absolutely within my type.

[largemandrill]

Fanart of Ricard, belongs to @catedroguett

Tip jar

[largemandrill]

[largemandrill]

i went to i love you island

[largemandrill]

What vibes do i give off??

[largemandrill]

[largemandrill]

as a certified Mage Guy: this is a really good earlier concept mage Davrin

[largemandrill]

the summoning

[largemandrill]

Alistair in Dragon Age: Origins > Dragon Age II > Dragon Age: Inquisition...

And y'all still like to pretend this isn't a problem, part of a much larger trend from BioWare.

[largemandrill]

More doodles of my Warden because this little shit is the center of my heart rn.

(Third one is a reference to something Alistair says that I couldn’t find 😔. He tells you that you eat like a fucking starved animal and that’s a normal grey warden thing. He is a good friend.)

[largemandrill]

to me it's strange that in dai, the game kind of forces you to take minaeve's story at face value? bc it is so weird when i thought about it. it's most likely just in there as a sort of Bioware Centrism Moment, but i wish they'd done more with it.

like ok. if her clan intentionally threw out a child into the woods, that means they were either cutthroat enough to want to kill her on purpose, OR, they wanted to abandon her, but still give her a chance at survival by being found. which was it?

seemingly... neither?

bc if they wanted to kill her, there is literally no need to give her a whole backpack and supplies beforehand. if they're cold-blooded enough to send a child to die, they probably wouldn't care about giving her extra food and stuff beforehand. and i feel like backpacks are actually pretty valuable, just on a cloth/leatherworking effort level, and especially for a small nomadic society that has nowhere to store things besides aravels. this is weird of them. they spent years feeding and clothing and raising her, then decide to coldly scrap all that effort bc they want her gone, and then give her another hand-crafted useful item before they leave her to die? makes no sense!

and if they wanted to just abandon her but still give her a chance, it wouldn't be hard to just send someone to walk her to the edge of a village first. they're experts at surviving and moving through the wilderness, why would it be a hardship for one adult to take a few days and go "ok minaeve, we're going on a field trip to see the human town :)" and then just lie to her and leave her there? still very harsh, and gives her a sad magic-related backstory and dislike of the dalish, but makes more sense! but they didn't do that either.

on a larger scale level.... every single dalish clan we meet prior to that Loves Mages. there's mentions of multiple mages competing to be first, or being traded if another clan is running low on mages. so even if minaeve's clan are assholes, it would be in their interests to basically trade minaeve to another clan for something else of value, and that would compensate them for the amount of time and resources they spent on raising her up to that point.

and on an even broader level, i think the dalish would benefit hugely from even weak mages like minaeve - even if all they ever learn to do is 1 ice spell... that means their whole group now has refrigeration? that's life-changingly useful! there is no way they'd want to pass up on that. and it makes sense why mages are so valued in their culture, bc having a mage improves their quality of life and chances of survival SO much.

so to me, one way minaeve's story makes sense is if the situation was actually: the clan was in some severe danger. the actual mages had to be on the front lines handling it, and no one else could deal with a scared mage child in the middle of everything accidentally setting things on fire. so they sent her out with some supplies so that she was at a distance from whatever was happening, and figured they'd track her down and pick her up in a few days when it was over.

but presumably they did not survive whatever the incident was, so no one came back to get her. minaeve, seven, interpreted this as being abandoned, and the chantry was like "yeah that sounds about right for those horrible cruel barbarians! luckily this child can be raised with good andrastian morals now 😌" and wouldn't dissuade her from thinking that.

[largemandrill]

[largemandrill]

I honestly think Morrigan and Alistair’s straightness comes more from a game design perspective rather than a character one. It would be weird if your girlfriend had to fuck your male grey warden friend in order for you not to die, so they restrict her to male only romances so there’s no chance of the player getting that very creepy feeling dilemma. For Alistair, I think they just asked themselves “is Fereldan woke enough for two kings?” and they decided that it wasn’t.

However, I fully believe that Cullen’s heterosexuality is a load bearing pillar. They tried making him bi and it didn’t work, so I can only assume it’s like when games have a random tomato out of bounds. If he could fuck men Thedas would collapse.

[largemandrill]

Hello!! I saw you did a poll for non-binary Rooks and was wondering if you could do one for HoF? I’ve been headcanoning that my Tabris is non binary for a while and was wondering how many did the same 👀