#<- that’s his info tag

[rodethecyclone]

At long last, Conrad gets a bio!

Conrad is the co-host for the morning announcements at Saint Cassian’s (alongside @kingcho’s Enid Crossings) and the semi-host of a low-budget community radio station. His voice is literally inescapable, hence being designated the “loudest boy in town.” Despite his stereotypical “bully jock from an 80s teen movie” look and weird local celebrity status, Conrad is never mean on purpose, but he’s not exactly attuned to the feelings of others, and frequently runs his mouth and says the worst possible thing for a given situation. His concept is loosely inspired by a niche genre of campy 1950s and 60s novelty songs about lovable teens dying in horrendous car crashes. Practically joined at the hip with @kingcho’s finest loser, Enid Crossings. Bonus info: he has four brain cells on the best of days, seems to drive that terribly on purpose, he’s a massive ham, his sense of self crumbles without an “audience,” he has canonically violated the Geneva convention, and word around the school says that he and Enid are more than just friends.

(Psst! For more info, check out his Karnak-style intro spiel with stage directions below the cut. If you still need more, follow his tag here on my blog, or ask me directly if you want!)

“Conrad Curtis. Born August 5th. Leo…evidently. Favorite ride: the plate-breaking game.

Born into a long-running small-town-celebrity tradition, Conrad inherited a ‘poster boy’ spot on Uranium’s very own community radio station, 104.5. With a pair of enthusiastically supportive parents, a spot on what could charitably be called the Saint Cassian’s baseball team, and excessive peer adulation, Conrad has never known anything short of praise and smooth sailing…with the sole exception of the day he learned that he had only been raised Catholic so that he could eventually become ex-Catholic, as all his forefathers had been.”

[A random cardboard cutout of the Pope appears from behind part of a broken carnival game. CONRAD throws a fastball at it, knocking it down.]

“In perhaps his first introduction to a regular human with a regular life, he befriended Enid Crossings during their tenure in a school production of Bye Bye Birdie. Enid ran tech backstage. Conrad played…”

[CONRAD performs an abhorrent, Elvis-esque hip swivel.]

“…himself. Despite the fact that Enid had caused his father’s infertility due to grievous testicular trauma during Field Day games only a few years prior— don’t act that part out, please— the two quickly became inseparable, operating as the school’s morning announcers.

Hotshot. Golden boy. Voice of the North. Uranium’s radiant son.

Conrad Curtis. The loudest boy in town.”

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[soybean-official]

The parts of you that support me

[bardicblast]

[iceycloversart]

based on this post by @mortalkcmbat

[feroluce]

On Sampo's name (ALL of his names!)

I feel like everyone who's a fan knows the meaning of Sampo's full name by now- the sampo was a legendary item that could magically make endless supplies of gold, flour, and salt, all priceless items at the time! So it works perfectly for a scammer businessman like Sampo. ☆

"Koski" is the Finnish word for "water rapids" which might seem kinda random but actually makes sense for him, since Aha and the Masked Fools are also referred to with water terms:

So water rapids fits perfectly! Sampo wants to stir the pot! He likes to shake things around and spice things up! He's taking that stagnant pool and turning it into water rapids! It would actually explain his ridiculous hair color, too; a dark blue wave tipped with white foam haha

What I really wanted to talk about is his drag alias name, though, Brughel Poisson, because to me that's where it gets really interesting.

So like in the English version, Sampo goes by Brughel Poisson when he's in disguise. Searching for just "Brughel" itself doesn't seem to get you much at first: a Flemish and Dutch Renaissance painter named Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who was famous for his landscapes and peasant scenery, especially Hunters in the Snow and The Blue Cloak.

He's referred to as "the Elder" because he had a son also named Pieter Brueghel (the Younger), and he began a long line of painters, all named Brueghel. Some of them did original work, and many of them created reproductions of the Elder's art to sell. The Elder was also famous as a printmaker. All of this is hilarious when you remember that Sampo is an infamous counterfeiter and has sold a relic called the Parallel Universe Printer JSKZJSMD

There is also something called Brueghel's Syndrome, named after one of Brueghel's paintings called De Gaper, which pictured a man yawning widely. It's a condition that causes the mouth to open and gape uncontrollably, twisting a person's countenance into a distorted mask of their usual face.

Tumblr doesn't have a way of censoring pics like twitter, so for the sake of the medically squeamish, I'm just showing De Gaper here. But if you look up Brueghel's Syndrome, you can find pictures of actual patients, some of whom really do make faces resembling Aha's comedy and tragedy masks!

In the Chinese and Japanese versions, his alias last name is a lot more silly- In those, "Sampo" is phonetically written as "san-bo" and "san-po." And in disguise, his last names are phonetically written as... "Bo-san" and "Po-san." The Chinese version uses different tones, but still. This smug asshole seriously just decided to write his own name backwards and called it a day NDMKXMDMD

In the English version, Poisson itself is kind of a reused Hoyo asset- it's also the name of Navia's fishing village in Genshin Impact. Which is a really silly name for a village, because it literally just means "fish" in French smzjxkdkdk but!

Again, more water imagery. And in English, if something is suspicious, we say that it's "fishy," which is perhaps the most fitting association yet for someone as shady as Sampo ☆

And for a good while I thought that was the only connection. But then. My beloved @/hydrachea, who is an actual native French speaker, dropped this on me right after April Fool's Day:

Poisson is literally the word you use to pull an April Fool's prank.

[felassan]

this post is under a cut in case anyone would consider it to be DA:D spoilers, as the things it mentions came from the leak a year ago (spoiler warning for link) that included screenshots and a gif of the game. (the things this post mentions are therefore not new information and this does not reference a new leak)

I'm just thinking again about Rook (which seems to be the PC's name or title) and the imagery conjured by the name. ◕‿◕ this post is just speculation and overanalyzing for fun. also this post is a now-finished draft from my draft section from a while back.

I think it would work as a surname (like "Hawke") or a codename (think Leliana's spies and contacts such as "Butler", "Farrier", "Butcher", "Charter", etc although these are all professions that end in "-er" or "or" iirc). it could also be a title (like Warden, Hero, Champion, Inquisitor, Herald) or a nickname - like maybe it's short for "Rookie", it's a Varric-assigned nickname and it references how the DA:D PC is the newest member of the team after he recruits them?

I think it sounds catchy, and cool - it's snappy and short, Hawke-like in this way. and it sounds like the kind of name a spy or secret agent might have in a fantasy, superhero or sci-fi-type setting.

a rook is a black bird, Corvus frugilegus, a member of the corvid family. rooks have been perceived as vermin and nuisances by people in the past, and persecuted due to this. they bear a resemblance to their crow and raven relatives, both birds which have a large cultural footprint and lots of symbolism in areas such as folklore and art. Hawke obviously also had a bird motif going on from their surname and associated art pieces. corvids also bring to mind the Antivan Crows (assassins, thieves, & spies), reminding of the stuff about how in this game the PC may be trying to operate under the radar, and the reporting on a previous iteration of DA:D which had the game concept as being focused on spies and heists. rook plumage is inky black, bringing to mind darkness and shadow.

from the bird angle, a "rook" sounds neat opposite a "wolf" imo. wolves are obviously another animal that have large footprints in culture, myth and folklore. in the natural world there is symbiosis sometimes between wolves and corvids when hunting/feeding. there are lots of photos of wolves and corvids together.

a colony of rooks is called a rookery. of course, the fortress of Skyhold has a rookery. it's from there that Inquisition Spymaster Leliana operates (operated) sending her black birds on missions with letters and messages to her many agents and spies throughout Thedas. what if Rook is one of Leliana's... "rooks"? a spy or agent of the remnants of the Inquisition.

A rook is also defined as "A cheat or swindler; someone who betrays" [noun], "mist, fog" [noun] and "to cheat or swindle" [verb]. it's also a type of trick-taking card game. these sorts of things bring to mind a rogueish, stealthy aspect, and the shady, shadowy dealings and card-game played in Minrathous Shadows.

a rook is also a chess piece. they're castle-like (since "rook" can also mean a castle or fortification) and usually have their top in the shape of a battlement. they can move in any direction along a rank or file on a chessboard on which they stand (horizontal/vertical, not diagonal). they can also do the "castling" move. in history, rooks have also been called towers, castles, rectors and marquesses. in chess, each player starts the game with two rooks at opposite ends of the first rank. chess itself is a game of strategy and tactics. "the chessmaster" as a trope is a character type who manipulates events, tugging on strings and moving 'pieces' into place on a metaphorical chessboard. [Solas' DA:I dialogue about his past, like the one he has with Sera about cells of spies/agents, hark to this]

in the castling move,

"Castling is a move in chess. It consists of moving the king two squares toward a rook on the same rank and then moving the rook to the square that the king passed over. Castling is permitted only if neither the king nor the rook has previously moved; the squares between the king and the rook are vacant; and the king does not leave, cross over, or finish on a square attacked by an enemy piece. Castling is the only move in chess in which two pieces are moved at once."

castling rules often cause confusion, even occasionally among high-level players. historically the move has its roots in the "king's leap", of which there were two forms and which arose in part it seems due to increasing importance of king safety as other pieces were given increased powers through time as the game developed. "the king would move once like a knight, or the king would move two squares on its first move. The knight move might be used early in the game to get the king to safety or later in the game to escape a threat." basically it moves the king away to safety and the rook to a more active position. there is also kingside castling and queenside castling. I wonder, symbolically.. is Rook more the king's rook, or the queen's rook? (reminds me of the Left Hand and Right Hands of the Divine hh). who or what is the king in this hypothetical analogy? the World of Thedas itself? as a castle or fortress.. Rook is the bulwark against what's to come? [over-thinking ik ik, tis just for fun hh].

by now we're all familiar with the chess game Solas plays in banter dialogue with Iron Bull during DA:I. in the in-world chess game, rooks are called towers. Solas moves his right-hand tower once. at a later point in the game, Iron Bull's "Arishok" piece takes Solas' left-hand tower, getting a check and leaving him feeling triumphant. Bull asks Solas wth he is doing as Bull takes Solas' remaining tower. "Your last tower, by the way". Bull, a spy and liar himself, bears down on Solas' pieces "with his full army", thinking a win is in sight. Undeterred, Solas executes a few moves in a sneaky plan and entraps Bull in a checkmate, winning the game after sacrificing various pieces to enact his plan.

rook also brings to mind the Tower tarot card and its meanings. it's associated with sudden, disruptive revelation and potentially destructive change. it connotes danger, crisis, sudden change, destruction, higher learning, and liberation, as well as adversity, calamity, deception, ruin and unforeseen catastrophe. reversed, it connotes things such as negligence, carelessness, apathy and vanity (vanity.. pride). in this depiction of the Tower tarot, lightning strikes from the sky, striking a crown (hubris) off the top of a tower and setting it alight as people fall from the tower to their doom. this imagery and the upright meanings of the card bring to mind the sudden massive change Solas seeks to bring about (destroying the Veil), the revelations and liberation for some that it might bring, his identity as Fen'Harel Lord of Tricksters (deception) as well as the destruction he seems to think the Veil destroying action will cause ("as the world burns in the raw chaos"...). the 'Tower scene' has also already played out once before in Thedosian history, when Solas created the Veil and sealed the Evanuris away, leading to the fall of Arlathan and its wonders. in modern Thedas, Morrigan and Flemeth (as well as possibly some side 'prophecy' type things) both allude to a big change coming to the world.

in DA:I, the Tower tarot card is ofc none other than Solas' ending card, if he is not romanced. in the DA:I version of the card, we see Solas, cloaked in a dark robe and holding a mage staff under a half-moon or eclipse. darkness seeps from his shadow, stark against the orange sky, and blends with the giant black Dread Wolf, looming ominously and open-mouthed above him with its many eyes. (the Tower tarot card Solas scene is later referenced in DA:D promotional art and DA:D-era in-world murals). it makes sense to have assigned this to Solas given the above discussed meanings of the Tower tarot card, but it's a verrry inchresting choice imo to then give "Rook" as a name/title for the DA:D PC.

and most inchrestingly, there's the symbol from the front of Mark Darrah's mysterious Red Book. this mysterious red book shows "a flaming rook" on the cover. the book was an internal guide for developer and publisher eyes only that summarized the vision for DA:D, in its Joplin iteration. we know that the Joplin project has since been revised to an extent that it was the newly codenamed Morrison instead, but the red book is known to still contain plenty of ideas likely to appear in DA:D. most pages of the book remain highly classified. it's the symbol on the front that's of most interest to us though for the purposes of this post. there is a castle, tower, or rook, like a fortress or the chess piece. above the tower, a fire burns, reminding us of the burning tower from the Tower tarot card imagery and what that symbolizes, as well as Solas' "world burning in the raw chaos" line from Trespasser. inside the fire is a wolf, the Dread Wolf, in a now very-familiar and repeated motif in DA:D art, merch, murals, teasers etc. whatever else "rook" may connote, it feels like it's not an accident at all that the PC's name is apparently "Rook", given this depiction of a fiery rook and the Dread Wolf together.

what do you think? ^^

[akai-anna]

@livmadart voice: he's like a bug

[brother-emperors]

Crassus, Caelius, Cicero, Catiline, Conspiracy

boy howdy these four sure are something. not featured in this soup of C names, Caesar! what on earth happened here.

Plutarch, Crassus

Sallust on Crassus, Ronald Syme

Patron and Client, Father and Son in Cicero's "Pro Caelio"

Crassus' New Friends and Pompey's Return, Eve J. Parrish

Catullus and His World, T.P. Wiseman

Cicero's Catilinarians, D.H. Berry

[pigdemonart]

I think its really cute that Manuel gets the most love from comments! I think he deserves it, because even I have dubbed him as the Best Boy. But, Mani has mixed feelings about receiving praise and being considered the favorite. He’d sooner think people are lying to him than believe they actually like him that much. Because, why would they?

His view of himself comes from years of being stuck in the middle.

[flaggermusli]

My apologies to all Jax fans for calling him a loser, it'll happen again

@vapolis

[origamipond]

“ ALL HAIL TO OUR MISFORTUNATE KING “

[twiggyrogue]

If it wasn't for the TMAGP ARG snippets I probably wouldn't be as obsessed about Sam but oh my goddd with what tiny we know about him I'm not over it. He's got a canon birthday (!!! He's 33 at the start of the show! It's p cool to know that tbh!) so we know when the Institute burned down, he was 9 year old. So at nine, maximum, he went through the Institute's child experiment. That's age he went through potentially a version of the Milgrim experiment! Mr. Spider whom, this child might have actively tortured someone because he was told to?? And that's probably the terrible event that was brought up in the interview but maybe it wasn't! Maybe it's something worse!! Oh no!!!

The guy scored the highest in empathy in the entire test group at 98% and now his job is experiencing other people's horrors like of course he can't help but look into them, of course he can't help but internalize them when Alice has warned him of what can happen, I'm so worried about this man!!!

[lifeonmvrs]

deadworth my beloved

[Image Description: a full-body digital drawing of miles edgeworth from ace attorney. he is lying face down on the ground. on the left, there’s text reading “I’ve fallen for you and I can’t get up. To: [colon] From: [colon]” in comic sans. the background is a solid pink.

the second picture is of a postcard and greeting card of the drawing as redbubble products. they are showed in a frame that resembles the structure of an instagram post with the user lifeonmvrs. it has a title reading "already available :3 [cat face emoticon]" and in smaller text one that reads "link in bio [heart emoticon]”. the third picture is the same but the products this time are a pin and a sticker. /end ID]

[lucreziaborgiagf]

anyway here’s how soukoku can still win—

[wildpeachfarm]

idk if its ethical but its not from critblr if thats what you mean. i went to college in the area and when i told my sorority sisters i was into mcyters/yters circa 2021-2 my gbig said "oh that reminds me some kid who creeped on us and some alumni at an informal works for mr. beast now" and they showed me a picture of Karl. my heart fell outta my ass that day fawk

ok welp I guess that's good enough for me, here you go guys:

This is very interesting tbh and honestly we knew they were all hypocrites but this is a new low especially for how high of himself karl talks when comparing himself to snf