#no ask game for me today i guess

[emry-stars-art]

Lets go lesbians

[anneapocalypse]

On Dragon Age II's Ending

The ending of Dragon Age 2 has always felt to me like the least morally ambiguous of any of the games' mage-templar decisions and frankly one of the least ambiguous "big" decisions in the series.

DA2 makes it extremely obvious that the Circle mages are about to be executed for something that absolutely none of them had any part in and no one, not even the Knight-Commander, is arguing that that isn't the case. You can feel whatever kind of way about what Anders did, and still recognize the staggering injustice of killing all the Circle mages for something that everyone, including the Knight-Commander calling for their deaths, is fully aware they did not do.

And just in case that wasn't clear, someone made a point of dropping in that bit of ambient dialogue telling us that Meredith is already trying to get clearance for the Right of Annulment before the explosion; she's just looking for an excuse. The game is pretty clear about the injustice of this situation, regardless of how many demons and blood mages there may or may not be in Kirkwall.

I'm a chronic replayer who enjoys making up new characters every time to see things I haven't seen before and I didn't have a particularly difficult time coming up with in-character, circumstantial reasons why a character might annul the Circle in DAO or recruit the templars in DAI and believe they're doing the right thing. For the former: dwarven noble who knows little about magic and believes what the Knight-Commander tells her, and chooses the wrong dialogue option with Morrigan in the party so Wynne attacks and therefore is not present in the party as an emotional anchor and a voice for the mages, and listens to Cullen when he says it's too dangerous to let any of the mages live. For the latter: non-mage human noble from a Chantry-connected family who just implicitly trusts templars, as he was raised to. Or Dalish elf who walks into Redcliffe, sees a magister stinking up the place and says "Well, the Dread Wolf take the lot of you then" and turns around and marches straight to Therinfal, conscripts the templars, disbanding the Order in the process. Just a couple of easy examples I've actually played.

But the ending of DA2 is a choice between "Yes, I will help to execute these people for something everyone knows they didn't do" or "No, I will not do that and I will help them defend themselves and escape." Of course it's possible to come up with in-character reasons to make the former choice, and I have! But it's much less of a choice a character could just stumble into, and you have to do a lot more ideological contortions for a character to do that and believe they're doing the right thing.

Yes, there are a lot of blood mages and demons in Kirkwall. While we don't get a lot of opportunities to treat blood mage NPCs with much nuance apart from Merrill as most blood mages are programmed to attack on sight (and this is likely a product of the game's tight development deadline), the game itself offers an explanation for this in the writings of the Band of Three, the Enigma of Kirkwall codex entry that you can collect throughout the story. While you have to look to find it, this history does make it clear that Kirkwall is meant to be an outlier, for reasons both political and historical (which is another post for another day). And Merrill herself, whether you agree with her viewpoints or not, does offer an important counterpoint: a character designed to be sympathetic while giving a more nuanced perspective to the player on why a mage might choose to use blood magic.

And yeah, even with the fact that the game makes you fight Orsino in the mage ending, I still think this. It's clumsily executed, yes, but Orsino going all blood magic harvester abomination is just one more example of what the game has been showing us all along: that mages (like most people) turn to extreme measures when they're backed into corners with no sense of hope, and the templars then use those extreme actions to justify further abuses of mages. I don't think it was strictly necessary (and for what it's worth, Mark Darrah agrees with that; it's a decision that was made out of concern for gameplay balance more than narrative and in hindsight he's said that he thinks it was a mistake), and I definitely think it could have been executed better, but as it stands it does fit an ongoing theme, and Orsino's actions still do not justify the murder of every other mage in the Circle.

And then there's that thing where Hawke can only receive the support of the nobility and become Viscount if they side with the templars, thereby agreeing to uphold the existing power structures in Kirkwall. It's easy to miss if you've never played through the templar ending (and also because Hawke doesn't hold the position for long and Inquisition doesn't really acknowledge that they ever did Correction: It is actually mentioned in the Champion of Kirkwall codex entry, and possibly other places as well, my memory just failed me), but to me that outcomes is absolutely inspired. It serves to highlight how deeply intertwined the nobility are with the Chantry. The nobles of Kirkwall want Meredith deposed because they feel she's overstepped her bounds by denying them a proper viscount, but they are not anti-Chantry or anti-Circle; they still want mages locked up, and they probably also remember what happened the last time Kirkwall's nobility decided to try and contest the Chantry's power in their city (see: Perrin Threnhold).

I find the templar ending genuinely interesting to play through in terms of seeing the story from that angle, and in terms of what it has to say about power structures and politics in Thedas generally and in Kirkwall in specific, which I also wrote about recently. (To say nothing of how differently it frames Varric in Inquisition when the Hawke he idolizes is the Hawke who slaughtered Kirkwall's mages to a one.) I would honestly recommend playing it at least once for lore reasons if you're into that sort of thing. But I would hardly say that you as a player come out of that ending feeling like you're playing the good guy.

And I'm not even arguing that all choices in the games should be this in-your-face. On the contrary, I don't think they all should. I like it when it's possible for a character to make a choice with unintended outcomes, or get accidentally locked into a worse choice because of previous decisions (like annulling the Circle and then being forced to kill Connor or Isolde). Those are some of my favorite kind of choices in these games. In this particular case, I do think the extreme nature of the choice is important to the story, both as the catalyst for the mage rebellion and to underscore why Anders did what he did.

So when people tell me that DA2 "both sideses" the mage-templar conflict... I respect that it's possible to feel that way about it, but I just don't see it. The game allows the player to role-play a character who might make various choices within its narrative; that is not the same thing as presenting all choices as morally equivalent in-universe, and it has never been the same thing, in any of these games.

If you're looking for one mage-templar choice that puts the injustice squarely in your face, I think the ending of DA2 is very much that.

[lilac-hecox]

I think it’s a bit weird why you’re acting like ianthony are going somewhere when bit city isn’t even out yet? Like they WILL be on bit city. I’m not trying to sound insensitive or anything but some people on the internet that you enjoy watching should not affect your real life or mental health, that’s just VERY parasocial. Then again, I have no idea what your life is like therefore I have no place to judge, but from what I do know it sounds kind of over dramatic?

Hi, Anon.

I realize they will be on Bit City. At the same time I don't want their sketches to end nor for them to stop being on games and pit and as such have been extremely anxious about it due to the radio silence on Smosh's end regarding Ian and Anthony content.

I have acknowledged that it is extremely parasocial of me to feel this way.

I also talked about other issues exacerbating my mental health.

After taking a little break I am feeling much better mentally.

I agree. None of this should effect my irl mental health and I spiraled in a way that impacted my feelings hence the break.

Whatever happens, I'm going to keep watching Smosh and supporting Smosh.

(I'm on mobile so I hope those links work. If they don't I'll re-edit)

[front-facing-pokemon]

[mcybree]

Im doing a lot of thinking abt why roleplaying feels different/less natural for me in beastlife s4 in comparison to s3, and i think it’s because there’s ways i know i should be feeling (based on the perception of my character— when i was fresh out of s2 nobody knew enough about my guy to have opinions) vs how i am feeling. I’m catching myself thinking, “it wouldn’t make sense for my character to [blank],” and it’s like… what do i mean by that. what do i mean that this feeling im having in-session “wouldnt make sense for my character” to feel? It might be surprising to other beasts who know me for one thing and expect consistency, i guess?? but in s3 i just acted on feelings and then shit happened. what. why am i trying to enforce a character that does not exist when the strength of mcrp lies in its improvisational nature. I didn’t write this guy on purpose, why am i trying to write him now

[svtskneecaps]

feel like the global tasks sweep strat should probably be nerfed somehow. my thought would be, give each team an individual ten minute overall cooldown on global task claims. that is to say, a certain team can only claim one global task per ten minutes. say, deliver gas masks, and then in ten minutes you're allowed to deliver tea, and then after another ten minutes you can claim hot chocolate.

another teams would be able to claim a global task for bananas during this time, and their own ten minute cooldown would start.

(the global tasks can either keep their individual ten minute cooldown [i.e. after tea is claimed no one else can claim tea for ten minutes] or a slightly shorter cooldown, say 5-7 minutes)

when a global task is claimed, everyone is notified, right? if not, in my hypothetical, they will be.

then, a team trying to sweep six tasks at once would actually take sixty minutes to do, allowing another team to swoop in and have a chance to stop it in cinematic, entertaining fashion rather than tubbo having to grind resources and then log out in front of the merchant to counter this, which is boring for everyone (including the person delivering). plus, if a team cuts it down to the last second and ends up getting delayed, they physically wouldn't have time to make a delivery, meaning even being a BIT of a nuisance could be a viable strategy, even if you can't manage to kill; if you can STALL you could still wreck their plans.

that's my dream anyway idk i'm not a game designer. just think it would be interesting for most players

(i elaborate under)

red team would have to shake up their strategies, which is fun since they're a team that kinda has to rely more on strategy than outright brawn (overall the team's pvp can't be relied on unless they have carre or phil, as seen today when pierre, bad, and etoiles attacked phil cellbit foolish and baghera, and cellbit and foolish both died to etoiles in the attack, despite it being a 4 on 1 at the time. baghera was killed by bad soon after. phil was the one to get the kills. the first day, when blue attacked [niki, tubbo, and bad as i recall] carre got both kills)

the other teams would then still have a way to stop a global sweep since a sweep would have to start earlier, allowing not only more time to arrive at global to pvp about it, but ALSO allowing another team to swoop in and steal the goal out from under the team again

i'm gonna use it in a scenario bc i'm badboyhalo and i can't stop myself from making examples:

so, tonight, if the proposed cooldown was in place, bad and tubbo would both still had roughly 17 minutes when red team would have HAD to start the sweep process if they wanted all six global tasks: 1 hour until the server closed at absolute MINIMUM. more for safety's sake.

therefore, in this scenario, there's a lot to happen

blue team could wait at globals, knowing red will probably try this strategy, and attempt or perhaps SUCCEED in killing red. if they kill red entirely, the operation is a wash; red doesn't have to gear to come back from scratch and take out blue team, and even if they could, the travel time to return to globals alone would mean they wouldn't get all the global tasks, potentially meaning they don't take the lead. if blue team is unable to kill red and dies themselves or has to retreat, but succeeds in delaying red, red would face the same problem.

if red sends in all of the task items on one person, and that person dies, even if the rest survived, blue could loot the items from that person and would be able to either use the items themselves, if green is currently the owner, or could run away with the items, effectively wasting red's time and again, meaning they wouldn't get all tasks claimed even if they were able to overtake the runner and reclaim their items.

i'm unclear what would happen if red divided the task items between them since it seems like the person claiming the task doesn't have to have all (or any? again, unclear) the items in THEIR inventory in order to claim so long as a teammate is nearby with the items in their inv (evidence: pac's vod "voltei... o que tá acontecendo no QSMP?!" at roughly 3:00:00; tubbo claims tea and tea is taken out of pac's inventory. i don't know the limits of this strategy)

blue team also has time to swoop in and steal a global task out from under red during this time. say, if red team had claimed the task for 10 tea leaves, upping the price to 15 tea leaves, and then blue team snuck in and claimed the task and set the price up to 20 tea leaves, (since the proposed 10 minute cooldown on claims would be TEAM LIMITED; red's cooldown applying to red only and so on). if red waited until the last second, they wouldn't have the time to reclaim this task even if they did have the resources, possibly forcing them to start their sweep earlier to counter this possibility, at which point team members who had logged on earlier and are out of time by the end of the night, OR members who live in time zones that don't allow them to stay up until server close, may have an easier shot at participating in defending against a global sweep.

all of this DIRECT CONFLICT would make for good audience entertainment and heighten the stakes of an attempted global sweep, since it would practically have to be one team defending globals for an hour while they pipe all their resources into it, knowing that if they die another team could easily swipe their task resources and use it themselves (along with the rest of their gear). it makes it more interesting, while still mostly viable.

plus it would force more strategizing for red team which is maybe just a personal plus, i just really like seeing people planning both in advance and in spur of the moment. it's really satisfying to see how a plan comes together and succeeds or fails; plus, since red team is the main team using this strategy at the moment and their main draw and strength as a team is cohesion and communication this would be completely fucking riveting for me as a viewer so maybe this is just a personal thing. but i really really think it would be fun

but again, i'm not a game designer, or a qsmp player, or a qsmp admin, or honestly even really a gamer? so maybe i'm off my rocker and out of my gourd and this isn't viable or balanced in any way shape or form but YKNOW what is this blog except putting stupid thoughts into the void and seeing if this time the void spits back hate mail so. i'm folding this into a paper airplane and throwing it into the abyss. hopefully it made sense.

k love you appreciate you getting this far, have a good week!!

(i hope your team gets a win in dramatic fashion and celebrates together!!! i hope they come together and unleash a plan so spectacular it takes the server by storm!!! i hope it's so good it becomes a vod you go back to even years in the future!!!! i hope you have a good week!!!!!)

[your--isgayrights]

Outside of Lee Seolhwa and Lee Sookyung, do you have plans for any other character outside of Kim Dokja’s primary companions (like Gong Pildu or Han Doonghoon) for your soulmate fanfiction? Constellations like Persephone or Uriel or Sun Wukong probably wouldn’t make sense to exist in real life but maybe characters such as Han Myungoh/Han Dareum or Jang Hayoung could fit? If I recall correctly, Jang Hayoung in particular is the one responsible for the title of the fanfiction, right? I feel like she alongside the Unidentifiable Wall and the Fourth Wall would be so thematically appropriate but I couldn’t imagine how you would do it if at all. I also want to say that I’m impressed how you managed to seamlessly incorporate so many references to the original ORV into your work. It must have required you to reread and recheck the wiki.

Yess, I'm glad you asked this anon bc literally I just threw in a little reference to Han Doonghoon and Lee Sungkook in the 4.4 update and got worried people would think they had to remember the characters well to understand the surrounding plot point better than Kim Dokja does. But I think I should trust the reader a bit more lol.

Unfortunately my inclusion of Aileen and Jang Hayoung isn't going to be as big as the other kdjco members, but they're sort of already set up in the fic and have a role in chap 5. I think JHY doesn't appear directly bc to me the relationship between her and KDJ is harder to make 'real,' though I have some ideas depending on how much I decide to include in chap 5. In my plans 5 will have a gaming tourney featured, so other big 'wos players' may be referenced further there as well.

Of course like you mention the fic title and many of the chapter titles are coming directly from the mouth of Jang Hayoung, so in that way she is constantly being referenced, haha.

Han Myungoh and his daughter are referenced earlier in Chapter 4. It's sort of a drive by.

I do make use of the wiki (bless the editorsn🙏), though mostly just to check dates, numbers, and spellings of names. I like to think of myself as someone with a pretty decent memory tho, so a lot of the more specific story references are definitely just me pulling in stuff I remember from my novel read throughs. Like I might have to look at the wiki to remember Han Dareum's name, but I'll never forget Han Myungoh's entire Male Pregnancy that he had like that was a crazy random W to me on my first ORV read through I was like hello??? Also that being around when JHY was being confirmed trans haha. I think I was only out for like a year or so before reading orv so the little gender fucky moments really stuck out to me.

Sometimes rereading my old work I also remember things I forgot happened in ORV. I think part of the reason I'm struggling so much with chap 4 and onward is that now that the wall fic characters have sort of developed to where they are some of the scenes I had in mind are less 1 to 1 with the OG. For instance, I'm trying to rewrite a scene I have of YJH and KDJ having a rooftop chat that like parallels the one back before the seoul's strongest incarnation arc in the novel, but it's a bit difficult. At first I wanted to include a lot more of KDJ interacting with the rest of YJH's team, but the rooftop Scene makes more sense to put a cap on the themes explored in chap 4. But when I first wrote this scene it was less specifically addressing that theme, because it was in the outline of like right after I wrote chapter 1, so it was kind of just the OG ORV scene with the flavoring of my AU on top. A lot of the little things they do and say in the OG novel would have to be quite finagled to fit anymore, so reworking it is the big task rn.

Anyway I'm really appreciative of people like you who take note of these small details <3. it's kind of helping me remember and appreciate a lot of the parts of me that were behind a lot of Wall fic originally if that makes sense? I am like reintroducing myself to him and giving him a hug instead of running away cringing just because it's me lol.

[taffy-glitch]

put our guy rex mohs on the bingo board

I feel like most of the things I'd have to say about him have already been said. ace icon. has the backstory of jesus plus every fairy tale character ever. what's more to say really

[weezerlvr228]

they look half dead ☹️

[wigglebox]

.

[illfoandillfie]

+

[a-lonely-dunedain]

12 for Margim & Celeair

12. "help me"

Margim's old habits die hard as it turns out (I think I could've done better with this one, but my brain is deep fried and crispy so Words and Descriptions Do Not Go. I plan to shove all these little prompt fics into an Ao3 fic once I'm done with all of them, so I'll probably clean this one up/flesh it out a bit then.)

There were no casualties for us in the last skirmish with the Dragon-Clan raiders, but still some injuries, and that’s where my work began.

I’ve spent the last few hours in the infirmary with the other two healers patching everyone up. Exhausting but rewarding work, and far less grim for once. There was healing to be done, but no mourning. By the time we were done, no one was in poor enough shape that they would need to stay the night here, so one by one all of our charges were eventually sent home to rest, as were the other two healers. Except for me of course, I offered to stay behind and clean up so they could go to their families. Gathering up bloody rags and discarded vials, making careful notes of what salves and politics had been used so that we could resupply before we ran out, and anything else that needed to be set right. 

Margim often stops by to help me with this, but I have not seen her yet. I imagine she’s celebrating the victory with Elain and her other friends, or has already gone home to rest and is waiting for me there. She looked tired when she returned with the other warriors.

Just then, I hear the door slowly open and soft footsteps approach. It sounds like someone is trying to be quiet, not necessarily trying to hide their presence, but trying not to draw attention to it at least. I look up from what I was doing and see that it’s just Margim. I smile at her "oh, hello Mar!"

“Can you… help me with this?” she asks quietly, although I'm not sure what 'this' is exactly.

“Hm? With wh…” I start to ask, but as she approaches I see the answer and my words seem useless. She moves her cloak aside to reveal a large black stain on her garment, her blood, slowly oozing from a wound on her side.

“You’re hurt!” I exclaim, gently taking her arm and guiding her over to a nearby cot.

“I noticed.” She responds dryly as she sits down, removing her cloak.

“How… How did this happen?” I ask, examining the wound. There is some panic in my voice, although I try to hide it.

“One of the cursed Draig managed to land a blow.” she says bitterly “Only after I caved his skull in, but his dagger found its mark anyway.” This is from the skirmish then, but… that was many hours ago. 

“And you didn’t tell anyone?” I ask in equal parts confusion and worry.

“There were-” she winces as I remove her garment from the cut, I whisper an apology. I’m being as gentle as I can, but the blood has clotted to her clothes and there’s not a way I can do this that won’t sting at least a little. “-There were others more hurt. I would rather not take your attention away from them.”

“There was plenty to go around,” I take a nearby bowl of clean water and carefully start to clean the cut with a cloth, “and I would rather have tended to this sooner… What if it was-”

“If it was more serious I would have had no choice but to come earlier. But the cut was not deep, it could wait.” her tone is strangely defensive.

My brow furrows. Maybe the cut was not deep, but it was still in a place where any injury would be cause for great concern. She’s still bleeding, and ideally, she would not be.

“-really, it hardly even hurt!” she insists

My frown only deepens, it clearly hurts a great deal. Margim sees that I’m not buying the act and lets out a defeated sigh. “...I’m not a very good liar, am I?”

“Not to me, no.” 

I’m nearly done dressing the cut. Luckily she was right that it was not deep, there’s little else I need to do to it, but I am still troubled by the fact that she waited hours before letting anyone see to it. It was not severe this time, but the concerning thought of her trying to hide a more serious injury –and the damage that could be done by that– is still in the forefront of my mind.

“So… why did you hide it then?” I ask quietly.

Margim’s averts her gaze “I… did not wish for the others to see.”

There would have been no shame in it, letting the others know she was hurt, for the other warriors were even bragging about their own wounds when I saw to them. The Caru-Lûth consider scars earned in defense of their land to be a badge of honor, as proof of what they endured for the sake of love and loyalty. The numerous battle-scars Margim already bears were part of the reason they so eagerly accepted her among their ranks, as they seemed visible proof of her strength and devotion. I know Margim would not see the scars from her time in Mordor that way, but whether or not she agreed with their assessment did not change the fact that they respected her for them.

None of them, least of all those who had fought alongside her, would ever think of her as weak for something like this.

“I do not think they would have thought any less of you for it.” I try to assure.

“That’s not what I was afraid of… I… do not know what I was afraid of.” she mutters haltingly, barely loud enough for me to hear. She seems to be looking away at something that isn’t there. “...It's a force of habit, I suppose.”

Ah, that makes more sense then. It was not a fear of shame that caused her to hide the wound, but an instinct carried over from Mordor, where showing any physical weakness would only paint a target on her back.

“You have nothing to fear here.” I say gently as I finish with the bandages, although I do not know if my words will do much to help. It’s not an easy thing for her to unlearn, not when it was fear that kept her alive for so long.

“I know it… but sometimes I think my heart does not believe it. We are not always on the same page.” she mutters slowly

“I understand. Well, a little bit, at least. If there is anything I can do to help, please, let me know.”

“You have already helped a great deal, there is nothing more I would ask of you.” she sighs “I think I would just like to go home and sleep.” she pauses, a somewhat regretful expression on her face "and... I'm sorry to have bothered you with all this."

"It's not a bother to me at all! I'm just glad I you're alright now."

[the-kipsabian]

i will legitimately be thinking about this game for years to come

[buglaur]

Um hi! I’m confused? I just read through all the McMahon legacy which I loved! (Theo and Clair are 🥰)

But who are the Calloways? Do they have a legacy? They are good looking pixel people.

hi there! i'm so glad you enjoyed reading the legacy!!

the calloways were twins, cillian and cathal, i did a bachelors challenge with, and i'm only realizing now that there's no link to it on my blog 😅 i hyped it up for like 3 months to only post about it for a week and a half ☠️☠️

you can read it from the start here: https://buglaur.tumblr.com/tagged/bc:calloways/chrono

from there i created the whole family and now they just live in my head and appear in random cas posts from time to time. i would love to do gameplay with them sometime but i just don't have the time sadly!

[vitiateoriginator]

Birthday keroppi time B)

[meownotgood]

I just got hired at the best job ever I'm literally so excited baaaAAAAAAAHHhhhh

I rant a lot in the tags I'm sorry