#immersive musings

[exhausted-archivist]

In regards to my last reblog on the scale of Thedas, latitude and stuff. I’ve been thinking about how much thought I give all this. Especially because this topic is one I’ve been talking with a lot of people about lately. It crops up a lot with people who, like me enjoy natural world building or are fanfic writers. Or really anyone who sits down and reads the lore at length. More times then not the question of Thedas’s scale comes up.

So, I want to establish I am very well aware that I’m likely giving it more thought than the devs. I have that luxury as a fan and consumer of the series. It is extremely relevant for me because I like making maps for the series, plotting out travel paths, and scaling things for da ttrpg campaigns I write.

So because I think about it a lot, I notice all the many different scales of Thedas in terms of travel time. How the scale they gave the ttrpg doesn’t match up with any scale they established in the main games or books. I think if the devs sat down and thought about establishing a standard scale and also considering just basic stuff we also wouldn’t have the Deep Roads be 2-4 miles / 3.21-6.43 km below sea level and display a lack of geothermal qualities. I think they’d consider how they built a world with at least 9.1 million people and tons of mega fauna such as giants and dragons and 14’/4.26 m tall bears that hunt dragons, all squished into roughly 1/4 of Europe and how much that isn’t really sustainable. How there would be much more impact if nature encroachment in civilization and how common things like that would be in places. Which they do consider it to a degree, I’m not saying they don’t. But I think if they thought about it just to make the world something that holds up a little better to idle musings, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. That the world would feel more real and alive and also narratively give them more to work with.

The contradictions and lack of consideration for the natural world has always been one of my critiques of Dragon Age, among other things. The reason why that is, is mostly because of a noticeable trend the lack of natural world building in fantasy. It’s a topic that has been discussed elsewhere and at length by other people, but to summarize nature is slowly having less and less impact in fantasy even in an ambient quality. Obviously this isn’t a universal statement, nor a universally required thing for a story to explore and have. That there are things that do focus on and explore it, but speaking in general terms, it is a trend in the majority of media.

Which for me is a bummer as it is an aspect of writing and world building I enjoy. I really like themes of man vs nature and to have that you need to have a basic level of natural world building. Which BioWare doesn’t really explore in Dragon Age despite having elements of it - such as how regular raw lyrium is explosive, mages get sick around all lyrium unless it is diluted to a safe amount for mages, and raw lyrium straight up kills them if they’re in the same room.

So then you have questions of how do mages go/handle being underground with such a risk? Dwarves have stone sense but would mages be able to tell when they’re getting close to large lyrium deposits because they’re getting sick? Does this impact grey warden mages? Darkspawn mages?

Things that don’t get fully acknowledged or explored despite being mentioned casually in codices most people don’t read. And they don’t for a couple of reasons such as potential coding issues but also all the questions you’d have to ask:

How would you implement that as a mechanic? Would you lock mage players out of entire areas featuring raw lyrium? Would they take environmental damage if you wanted the players to explore it regardless? Would it be a mechanic only applied by in harder difficulty modes? Do you acknowledge it in banter but not in any other way? Create a way to explain why the pc mage and their mage companions aren’t dropping dead?

BioWare’s answer seems to seemingly just ignore it because it would make gameplay too challenging/punishing and likely might not be fun for a player to deal with. But they compromise by keeping the lore active in the canon through codices and low impact additions. Which is a completely okay solutions, not my preferred but I get why they do it.

When I approach this lore, I do so without expecting them to fully flesh out each nation or know which city has the most resources and the geologically rich lands in said country. Dragon Age, and BioWare in general, relies on semi-soft world building. The world was after all designed for a game. They only need to build out what they need and what hopefully won’t paint them into a corner with future installments.

Additionally, the writing style for Dragon Age doesn’t suit the hard world building that I prefer, I’m quite aware of that but also know that when it comes to talk about world building in any media, there is always the issue of people (like me) who world build for fun and consider all these small aspects but ultimately they aren’t always needed and necessary for the story a game like Dragon Age is telling.

Dragon Age is told with the intention of things being given from an unreliable narrator. Built on the concept of: there’s three sides to the truth, what x thinks happens, what y thinks happens, and then what actually happened. Which works and I love the premise.

That said, I think that it also impacts lore that shouldn’t be subjected to the unreliable narrator. Foundation or anchor lore points to be specific. Which, as we know, BioWare has always struggled with consistency in their lore, particularly with Dragon Age.

Distance is one of those foundational points that shouldn’t change, and it’s also one of those points that you don’t have to give exact travel times. You can leave it vague and stick to the official statements like the ones we have of Ferelden being the size of England (or Ireland depending on the source you use). If you’re going to be giving specifics, then I think being consistent with how long it travels to get to point a to b and not changing it multiple times in one game should be a basic expectation that is met.

Other ones the series has and is pretty consistent with is how we know Thedas has 24 hours a day, they have seasons like we expect, and are in the southern hemisphere.

Do they sometimes slip up because editing doesn’t catch they’ve made a reference that applies only to the northern hemisphere? Yeah, and that’s not bad. There are a lot of people working on the project and things slip through.

I know I have the luxury to think about Thedas in a capacity that allows for the hard world building that I like. I also know I focus on and enjoy aspects of lore that are not exactly popular for their main audience and are pretty niche.

I don’t expect BioWare to world build how I do because I’m not world building for a massive and varied audience. Not even when I do world building for my tabletop games, because I’m catering to a smaller and more specific audience.

Still I think it’s valid and worth pondering these little elements of the world building. For fun, appreciation, and to nurture one’s own creativity and understanding of media, the world, and what they think makes a believable world.

Devs might not have time to consider it but we sure do and that’s half the fun of enjoying media I think.

[astrxlfinale]

I wholeheartedly accept my fate that I'm doomed to write long.

For this is my burden to bear.

[yeonban]

If I speak.

[bargarraninc]

the child of a traitorous thane; musings on sleep no more's porter

SON He has killed me, mother. Run away, I pray you! [Dies.]

— Macbeth, Act IV. 2

There is a certain beauty to the Porter's character in Sleep No More — for he exists only in the transitional space of the Lobby, a minion of Hecate meant to set up the important scenes through which the looping tragedy of Macbeth will continue to flow. Without him, Banquo is not given the letter holding his prophecy, Malcolm never learns of the falcon shot down, the prophecy cannot take place.

The Porter is loop-aware — there is a consistent deterioration in the character as the show goes on, everything becoming harder and harder for him to deal with. Throughout setting up the scene for the next magical cycle, he is well aware what his actions lead to. It is why he tries to stall Agnes from going upstairs, to where he knows she will be put through the harrowing ordeal of tear collection by Hecate. He tries to keep her safe, failing each time.

Another party that he desperately (moreso than with Agnes) tries to keep safe is Lady Macduff, the innocent murdered for sins not hers in any manner. This is the most intrusive we see the Porter — as he tries to bat off Danvers and her poisonous milk, milk he knows will render Lady Macduff incredibly vulnerable and thus easier to kill.

In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the chief character who attempts a similar, desperate protection of the Lady and who too fails is the Lady's young son. Stabbed to death by the Murderers, her son cries to his mother — begging for her to run away, abandoning him in his last minutes as to save herself from a similar fate. Reversing the traditional parent-to-child protection, the kind we see with Banquo and Fleance when they are attacked, here, the child must be the protector.

Every loop, our Porter fights off Danvers and loses, watching Lady Macduff grow weaker in the aftermath of drinking the accursed milk. He then hears her death, tortured by its violent sounds as he hides in the lost luggage space, desperately trying to distract himself. Then, everything resets again, actions supplemented by his own hands and he continues to live this harrowing loop again and again and again. Why?

In my eyes, our Porter is not only Hecate's lost child in the forest but also the lost son of the Macduff's. The child doomed to protect his mother. After all, Fife is a wooded area.

The Porter is actively putting himself through the loops, losing himself to the inertia of Hecate's endless time magic, out of a deep, child-like hope that this time, he will be able to set things aright. Maybe, it will be this loop, just one more each time, that he will be able to protect his mother from the brutal fate she suffers. Just one more try. Hope keeps him centred as he hands away the note for Lady Macbeth to Danvers, moping in the phonebooth, knowing it will restart his suffering.

There is more substance in the performance to support the Macduff Child theory —

When Lady Macduff is murdered, something he is intimately aware of and scared by, the Porter hides himself into the Lost Luggage. He leans into childish methods of comfort, making paper boats and busying themselves playing with it, even if the boat is made of a tearful letter to his tormentor that he knows will be ignored. Some Porters even tear up at the noises, cowering closer to the counter.

The Porter only emerges from Lost Luggage when not only the murderer Macbeth but Macduff too is gone. In Macbeth, the only conversation we see between Lady Macduff and her son concerns her worriation that her husband is a traitor — abandoning her and her children in a place which he himself finds too dangerous to stay in. There is little affection lost for Macduff on the end of the Porter. He waits for him to be gone, only willing to put himself through the torment if it is to comfort his mother, to give her her coat. His traitorous father, gone again to protect the son of another.

Lady Macduff's messes are cleaned up with a gentleness the Porter shows little of to the other residents (bar Boy who he is in love with) who pass like storms through the Lobby. As he collects her strewn clothes, the Porter dons them with a childish glee, resembling more than ever a child rifling through their mother's cupboard, finding something that makes them feel beautiful. The clothes are collected carefully and packed away, her coat is kept safely hooked. Her presence in the lobby, even through just her abandoned possessions, is looked after gently.

You can never know the true story behind the residents of The McKittrick — for those are secrets they keep close to their hearts, lost in their chosen silence. But, this personal retelling of the Porter's story as I understood it is one I can share easily and so I do. My poor Porter, my poor poor Porter.

[conherofrost]

Holy shit-

That damned assassin keeps finding new ways to freak me the hell out. I was out like a light when he came back from his kills when suddenly I'm awoken by a touch to the forehead... and that silent blurry shadow with glowing red eyes is hovering over me over the back of the couch with his hand on me.

Sure, he was probably checking for a fever in his creepily quiet way but for all I knew in that second I was about to die!!

A solid minute of screaming on my part. Hit was quite quick to (perhaps apologetically) offer me some of his sleepytime tea and way too much awkward silence hung over the waiting for the water to heat up.

Hit went back to his room and I'm finishing my tea as I'm blogging this, trying to settle down. Be still my heart, you're still beating today...

[lindscys]

give me more undercover threads

[fusionpoweredasexual]

I have been stuck in an airport waiting for my plane for the last seventeen hours after my first flight was cancelled.

I wish I knew how to play the harmonica so that I could slouch by a wall and play melancholic music like a grizzeld old cowboy in a no-where town somewhere in the wild west. Stuck in this dirthole for far too long, and Having long ago given up on ever seeing my darling clementine again, just wondering whether it'll be a pinkerton or an outlaw that gets me first.

[apollos-boyfriend]

when did the brazil get bigger

something something manifest destiny

[ofyorkshire]

sees 1 gifset of oliver jackson cohen

the temptation to try writing luke crain bashes me over the head once again. oh. i could write luke. i really really really think i could. i'm so weak for the broken ones who try, and fail, and have to try again. the resilient, bloodied ones who have nothing to lose but find things to hold onto anyway.

[dangaer]

one thing i love about the oto.me genre is how it's thought of as just, you know. visual novels dating random people and getting different endings depending on how you act until you go into the character routes and just ... oh? they've got a lot going on there, haven't they?

[a-treatise-on-velociraptors]

I feel like there's a whole essay to be written about what make good storytelling in a fanfiction context vs what makes good storytelling in an original IP context. Why is it that I love transformative fanworks, but when something 'official' feels too fanfic-y it doesn't sit quite right? What makes something feel fanfic-y in the first place? Why is it that some tropes work better in fanfics than in original works, and vice versa? What does it mean when I think a story feels like it's a fanfiction of something that doesn't exist?

[hyaciiintho]

🌸｡*ﾟ+. If anyone has a nice version of ph*t*sh*p (cracked or not) they're willing to share with me, I would be forever grateful. I got hit with the "You're using an unlicensed version--" message and I can't use mine anymore c': and I can't remember where I had gotten mine and will need to filter through a bunch of... questionable links to find it again online.

So if anyone has a link to a trusted downloaded, I would appreciate it a ton!

[unironicallycringe]

Hold on why was Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) starring Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, and Charlize Theron actually kinda good??? I expected to rewatch as an adult and for it to fall into the genre of "2010s Dark Action Retelling Of A Fairy Tale Cash Grab Trying To Be LotR and Batman", but it actually held up alright?

Like don't get me wrong, it wasn't perfect. Story had some weak spots that could've used shoring up, but it was enjoyable. If this were a Disney live action it probably would have been really annoying.

Also Florence's credits song fucks

[huescs]

adore every new episode of demon slayer that comes out this season because i can be the same delusional i was for jjk where i can imagine, somewhere, at some point, izan is just hanging out around in the hot spring--- trying not to fall asleep and drown.

[haledamage]

if there's one thing I hate more than an unnecessary feature, it's one that's impossible to turn off