#but this goddamn dao guide...................PLEASE

[danielnelsen]

so does anyone have any info on the dao official guide collector's edition with the whole extra 70 pages of lore? because there are occasional references to it on the wiki with some lore that isnt anywhere else and i cant Not Know Things yknow..

[spacetravels]

i am so unwell about dragon age and knowing u from the choices fandom i got so excited ur playing soooo what did u think of dao? da2? who did you romance and what was ur character like? how are u liking dai? got pics of ur inky? 🥺 (only if u want!! no pressure to share ofc 💖) i myself am an alistair anders solas girlie 😔

WEHHH thank you… veilguard looks so good i have to speedrun dai but man all of you who’ve been waiting since like 2014 are my heroes cuz i’m just gonna trot in like lalala… (has been here like three months)

dao is my favorite by far i think… i’m easy to please LOL it has my favorite story and i love the cast so much ;_;/ i played warrior lady cousland so i did marry alistair HUHU he’s my favorite romance across all the games but i wanna replay so bad to romance morrigan and have a diff silly little world state (trying not to think about doing this until after dav LOL) but god . HoF is just so so funny and i had so much fun…

da2!! i played blue warrior hawke <3 i liked running around kirkwall LMAO i think it was really fun to just contain the story around this one city and just hang out with my best friends 🥹 but goddamn. no one warned me about everything hawke goes thru LIKE 😭 HAVE A VACATION!!! i didn’t romance anyone though in my first playthru HAHA i kind of regret it though cuz by the end i wanted to romance isabela but i also think for my hawke i was happy to not have had a romance cuz it makes sense for my thoughts about her … like she’s just happy to still be alive and wants to do right by everyone who’s ever believed in her so she never thought about it but maybe after all gets said and done she’d seek out izzy… one of those real Slow burns in my brain heehee.. (pro mage .. btw)

AS FOR DAI !!! i’m terrible with open world games. NFKSJFKSKFKL but i sincerely am enjoying it cuz i’m following a quest guide so i don’t lose my marbles… it’s funny cuz i like. technically knew the most abt dai before playing through the games cuz [gestures at solas] but that’s alright cuz most of it has actually been a treat and a surprise :-) just not. the ending

my inky’s name is deirdre & she’s a human rogue 🙂‍↕️ i don’t have pics rn i’m at work JFKSLDK but ! kind of a little shit. it’s nice that everyone humors her stupid ass. as for romance…. blackwall…. he compels me… something is wrong with him and i like it <3

i’m close to starting wicked eyes & wicked hearts but i’ve been taking the time to explore places and do side quests stuff cuz i wanna be overleveled LOL and i need to switch up my groups more. except for varric. that’s my emotional support companion

BUT WWWWW i wanna draw my inky more & more da fanart when i’m not swamped with other projects and/or playing dragon age & fields of mistria bahahah.. i’ll remember to share more thoughts as i play 🥹🫰

[words-writ-in-starlight]

the untamed is on netflix, right? i think i've seen it. i'm enjoying your posts about it and my mom would love if i watched a chinese show (it looks chinese, i might be wrong though) but i'm kinda short on time so please pitch to me why i should watch it so i will be convinced and look past the lack fo time

Anonymous asked:

ok the untamed looks cool af how doesone watch it 

A L L R I G H T I’m finally going to make a rec post, I’ve put this off long enough.  You’ve definitely already started to watch it, clever, so please forgive me for using this as an excuse to pitch this show.

So, for starters, Anon, The Untamed is indeed on Netflix!  It is in Chinese!  If you (like me) do not understand Mandarin Chinese, the Netflix English subbing is…fine, it’s fine, but I recommend poking around in the fandom because every single form of address is changed to the character’s full name.  And maybe I just spent too much time doing translations for my old Spanish and Chinese and especially Latin classes, but I think there are some things that, A, shouldn’t be translated or, B, should be translated awkwardly over being translated incoherently.  

I digress.  My thoughts about maintaining forms of address in their native language for the sake of clarifying levels of respect/etc are not relevant here.  Chuck a note in my inbox if/when you get confused about everyone’s three names and I’ll write/link you a guide.

POINT IS.  The Untamed is an adaptation of the novel Mo Dao Zu Shi, which is generally translated as “The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation,” and my quick pitch for it is: There’s a plot, sure sure, it’s the story of Wei Wuxian (his fall from grace to Most Hated Person In Magic!China, and then his resurrection and efforts to solve a murder), and if you like character-driven fantasy narratives you Will Like This

B U T

You know that post “but is he…you know…your narrative foil?”  That’s this show.  If what you crave is “one character committedly pines over another for twenty years even when the entire world hates that person,” please let me interest you in Lan Wangji, the love interest.  They have a kid together.  It’s a great romance.  Literally what else do you want from me.  I love a narrative foil, I love a tragedy, I love an epic love story, I love a found family.  And good GOD do I love a character who self-destructs in an effort to do the right thing.

Wei Wuxian isn’t evil.  He’s not even especially malicious.  But when the chips were down and he needed to survive, and to save people, and to figure something out, he took the only avenue left to him, and it was—it was inevitable, really, that it make him the villain of the piece.  He saved a lot of lives.  Everyone except Lan Wangji hates him for it.  He’s already thoroughly despised by the time he starts actually doing things that are objectively bad.  Talk to me about it forever.

My usual list of free-form associative Things I Like That You Will Probably Also Like under the cut:

Wei Wuxian!  I know he’s the main character but I love him so much that he gets a bullet point!  He’s the kind of lighthearted goofball who’s perfected the “I Would Honestly Die Before Showing Emotion To Anyone, How Dare You Imply That I Am Not Sincere In My Perpetual Good Humor” mask, and it hits like a sledgehammer when that mask cracks.  I would watch this actor flip between smiles and homicidal rage all day.  He gets a hug from Son Boy in the last episode and I almost cried.  50000/10.

Lan Wangji!  A great love interest!  Noble to the core!  Incredibly bitchy!  I want five more just like him!

This is where I mention that China has strict censorship laws, so, despite the fact that they kiss and have sex and get married and the whole nine in the book, the show is all Intense Staring And Love Declarations Where They Never Say The L-Word.  But like.  Please trust me, it’s actually So Romance.  If anything I think I like the  romance in the show better.

Wen Ning!

I don’t have anything else to say about him, I just love him so goddamn much.  He and his sister Wen Qing are stars and the rest of these sinners don’t deserve them.

COMPETENT. VILLAINS.  I’ve spilled a lot of ink on this one lately, but I love competent villainy, I love villains who have Goals and plan to Achieve Them and actually pull it off.  Jin Guangyao, the big bad of the “present”(the part where Wei Wuxian is resurrected and kicking around trying to solve a murder), is actually phenomenally good at his job and I support him even though I enjoyed watching him go down in flames.  There are enough villains in this show for everyone to have their preferred type of villain, from Devoted Right Hand Man to Megalomaniacal Overlord to Freewheeling Engine Of Death.  GREAT villains in this show.  Which brings me to…

YI! CITY! ARC!  I’m not going to tell you that much about it, but it’s dark and tragic and features my very favorite villain in the entire show, Xue Yang, who is just.  *chef kiss*  A horrible monster of a man.  An unapologetic, cold-eyed shriek of a villain.  The very best at what he does, and what he does is absolutely horrible, and I would watch an entire series about this five-ish episode arc.  Also, I’ve adopted Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen from the Tragic Ships Shelter and someone should toss me a headcanon ask for them.  Any AU your little heart desires.  I love them.

THE MAGIC!  I know it took me a long time to get here, but it’s a very character driven show and I am a very character driven person and I just wanted to yell about characters for a minute.  But anyway, I’m told that the Untamed is a great onboarding point for this genre of Chinese fantasy novel, because they do a really good job of making the necessary points accessible.  I had no familiarity with wuxia/xianxia/etc when I started watching this and everything about cultivation made sense to me, or at least enough sense to be going on with.  It’s very lovely and fascinating and it’s where they put their Entire Non-Clothing Budget.

This is where I mention that their effects department clearly used their entire funding for, like, cool sword stunts and beautiful clothing.  The wolf puppet in particular is just.  Almost adorably terrible.  If that’s going to severely impact your enjoyment, Idk what to tell you, man.

Related to the above, I love plotlines about characters losing control of their magic.  That’s all I’m going to say about it.

Unreliable narrators, baby! They set up a lot of concrete facts about Wei Wuxian in the first two episodes that become obvious as complete bullshit as you go on, and it’s very satisfying to watch!  See also, Nie Huaisang, the most unreliable narrator of them all, whom I adore.

Beyond all those things…it’s just got a lot of great relationships in it.  It’s hugely driven by the affection people have for each other, or the places they feel they’vebeen deprived of that affection.  It has a lot of iterations of the same relationship in wildly distinct ways, if that makes sense—offhand, there are maybe four major sets of siblings, five if you count the Jins, and they are all radically different and insanely compelling.  The basic structure of Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji, the “black cultivator/white cultivator on a crusade to change the world” thing, appears a lot of times, and goes horribly awry in a slightly different way for all of them.  That kind of in-universe repetition of themes, doing the same thing over and over again looking for the Right Path, is one of my favorite things to appear in a story—see also, the Kencyrath (twins, Dreamweavers, Knorth lords, loyal Kendar, etc), the Animorphs (warrior teams, deaths on the field, etc), any number of other things I yell about.

TL;DR: The story is great and the cultivation is fascinatingand the schemes are elaborate, but