#not really a spoiler fortunately...

[fake-married-my-dead-fiance]

Fangs of Fortune Text Posts (1/4) (2 here, 3 here, four)

[crescentfool]

the great seal <3

[bunabi]

Actually I'll talk about it now to clear my mind before bedtime:

I think I've played enough now to say definitively that I don't like Rook. I wish I could choose not to have Natalene smirk and quip so much. I wish the tone options made a difference.

I wish whenever I chose an 'I distrust Solas' option Rook didn't fire off what sounds and feels like a tumblr post. I wish Those Lore Drops weren't delivered via murals and then peer reviewed in the Veilguardian group chat.

And maybe more than any of those things: I wish Rivain was more than a coast and an arenaaaaa. 🫂

[vigilskeep]

ignoring that isabela wouldnt say any of that whenever she says something i want to hear

[flowersforthemachines]

Remembered I talked about it under one post but never actually posted this here.

Here's a (rough) visualisation of how many times Rook's faction is referenced in conversations. Based on the pics, from most to least referenced it goes like this:

Grey Wardens > Mourn Watch > Antivan Crows > Shadow Dragons > Veil Jumpers > Lords of Fortune

[aikawa-kazuki]

[jayktoralldaylong]

Their Father: Doffy, I'm sorry.

Doflamingo: You're sorry?

(And in that moment, he remembers their father....taking them from the wealth and privilege they were born into. Telling him to be nice to slaves. Getting their house burnt down by said slaves. So that they were stuck scavenging for food and getting beaten every day by slaves. His mother dies before them without a funeral in a beggars shack. His father begs for the wealthy to save them but they are cast aside. Doffy had to listen to his baby brother cry himself to sleep every night. They lived a life struggling, begging and getting tortured by slaves.)

Rocinate, begs: Doffy wait! He's still our father. He meant no harm. Please Doffy, he's all we have!

Doffy, elder sibling anger boiling in his heart: I don't forgive you.

(He kills their father in front of Rocinate.)

That is the day that Rocinate realises his brother has become a monster, and that he will spend the rest of his life trying to end Doflamingo.

That is the day Doflamingo decides that he will do anything to protect his family. Even if the person he has to shoot down.....is family.

"Doffy was a monster from the start."

I don't believe that. Yes, he was racist and oppressive, he was raised in that environment. When he was taught to be kind, Kindness saw the death and suffering of all the people he loved.

Throughout he asked questions "Why is mother dead? Why am I hungry? Why are we in pain?"

His father never gave a satisfactory answer. He just begged and cried for his children to be spared, but the boys got tortured anyway.

Obviously the moral lesson Doffy would take from that....is that kindness is for suckers. 💀

No I don't support his actions in Dressrosa. He enslaved an entire population of people. He didn't just execute rebels either, he broke them first. 💀 He was a monster. He needed to be stopped. He said Dressrosa was his birthright, it would have been given to him if he'd still been a Celestial Dragon. So either way, Luffy would have eventually beat him up in Dressrosa. 😂💔

But then what would have happened to Law? Doffy was the only one to accept the dying boy. Everyone rejected him cause they thought he was cursed. But not Doffy.

A little boy who tied bombs around his neck. He knew his disease would discourage people so he even offered to be used for a suicidal mission. He didn't care who took him, he just wanted to destroy. Doffy saw the hatred burning in that child's eyes and he smiled.

Doffy took that child and set him at his table, scolding the crew when they feared Law's disease. He gave Law access to everything he could learn on that ship. He let Corazon disappear for weeks in an attempt to cure Law's disease. He found the cure for Law.

Doffy was a tyrant, yes. But he loved his family.

Unfortunately, finding the cure for Law marked the end of the time he would spend....loving that boy. For Law would take his brother from him.

Doffy said he'd kill anyone who dared lay a finger on his brother. Ironic. He ended up killing him with his own hands.

(Every time I remember the Donquixote tragedy I go into a rant.)

Do you think at the end, when they both pointed guns at each other, Doffy knew that Corazon would never be able to pull the trigger? Do you think that made him angry? Knowing his brother was all talk. That he'd joined his crew to kill him and he'd been provided with many opportunities, but he'd never done it. Even though Doffy trusted him more than anyone else. Angry cause he knew his brother could never kill him. Angry cause he knew he was not the same. Angry cause he wished.... Corazon had kept on pretending. Then he wouldn't have to pull that trigger.

Corazon means Heart.

Doflamingo gave him that name.

I shouldn't wish someone as terrible as Doffy got a better life but..... I wish his father's plan had not failed so epically. I wish he'd been able to teach that boy to be kind. He clearly had the capacity for it. 😭😭😭😭

Yet another irony, Doffy's father sought to turn a tyrant into a kind man. Doffy sought to turn a doctor into a tyrant with Law. They both failed.

[i-cast-zone-of-truth]

also the way Zhao Yuanzhou IMMEDIATELY starts teasing Zhuo Yichen once he’s got him on the hook. He Cannot Resist. Like he has spent a lot of time alone thinking his heart is dead, but isolation doesn’t test that. A righteous and slightly naive young man who gets 300% flustered at the slightest tease, now that’s a vitals check!

[morweneledhwen]

Hou Minghao as the great demon Yinglong

[enquire]

Kismet

I imagine anyone following this series could probably guess who I was doing next. Yep, it's Utsuro. This one was kind of interesting. I'm not super sure about the markings (they might be a little too complex? still thinking about it) and his hair was a pain to translate into pony form for me. No clue why he gave me more trouble, but I might end up changing that aspect later because it still feels a little off to me. Also, the markings are sort of part of his cutie mark, kind of like how Luna's is. I kinda wanted to give the vibe of his cutie mark being invasive/changing him. Like his coat has been symbolically tainted or burned from it. He always had some spots and freckles, but after he got his mark, the darker markings + patches/shadows over his flanks and legs appeared.

Anyway, let's get into things...

Kismet was an ordinary earth pony who lived with his family somewhere in Equestria. Like most ponies, he was excited to get his cutie mark, and curious about what it would be.

When an oddly foreboding black mark appeared on his flank one day, strangely accompanied by several new markings, at first, Kismet was just as overjoyed as any former blank flank would be.

However, as time passed, it became clear that Kismet's cutie mark was unique, to say the least. Because no matter what kind of trouble came his way, somehow, it would pass him by completely unharmed.

Good fortune and success followed him wherever he went. Kismet prevailed whenever he attempted anything, and those closet to him were often granted the same blessings.

Soon, everypony wanted to have Kismet around. In the beginning, Kismet was happy to suddenly have so many friends. But eventually, he began to realize that nopony wanted his companionship because they cared about him or enjoyed spending time together.

When a team wanted to win an important game of hoofball, they invited him. When his town's mayoral election came around, the two candidates fought for his support. And the few friends and family Kismet had cared about slowly began to treat him differently.

It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that Kismet came to see the mark as a curse. Once he realized the fortune tied to him was the root problem, he tried everything he could think of in order to make it stop. But no amount of bad luck charms or attempts to control it himself affected the endless good luck.

In the end, Kismet gave up entirely. He left his hometown behind, and started covering up his cutie mark and going by various aliases during his travels. (His current being "Sunset Shores," and using a cutie mark belonging to somepony too distant from him to have the identity theft be an issue)

He tried a few times during this period to start new lives for himself. But inevitably, his good luck would start affecting things around him and the ponies he had met. And in the end, the connection would be made between the two, and Kismet would quietly vanish.

Being alone was somehow more tolerable than being lonely while surrounded by others. So Kismet simply drifted from place to place, not making connections, and never allowing anyone to really get to know him.

On a few instances, his path led him to several other outcasts. Ponies who had nothing, were failures, or had nopony to trust or rely on. Kismet couldn't help but see himself in them. And the ways in which his fortune changed those ponies' fates were some of the only times Kismet ever felt anything positive about his mark.

Though after the connection was made, and things began to deteriorate, Kismet would disappear again. The gratitude and reverence was overwhelming. That being said, he never regretted them, and eventually, he came to realize that somewhere along the way, one pony whose path had crossed his was different. There was one pony who he had helped, who had seen what he was, and yet still saw him before any of the rest.

Perhaps that is why she, and she alone, was able to find him again. After traveling halfway across Equestria, the two of them met once more. And so, Kismet no longer travels alone.

Also, above are examples of what it looks like when he covers up his original cutie mark.

Right: "Sunset Shores" with Clover Shore's cutie mark. Left: Blank flank version. (he doesn't always bother with replacing it)

Last few notes: Kismet's fortune is probably a little different given the universe and how cutie marks work. It still makes his life miserable but doesn't necessarily completely drag the meaning from everything. At least not quite to the degree divine luck does. Just a *bit* less intense but still a curse.

And there isn't a despair cult, world-ending tragedy, nor any killing games in the works here, so there's that too...

[fake-married-my-dead-fiance]

Li Lun bought little Zhu Yan his umbrella and Zhu Yan bought Li Lun his drum which they both now use as their primary weapon? I did not think this drama could get any less heterosexual but here we are

[hollowsart]

Spider-Man: Octopus-Girl updated again and I--

[rubensmuse]

having meditated on it, the issue with the lords of fortune isn't that they're doing repatriation now, it's how it's being handled as a piece of storytelling. and the way it's being handled is fucking BORING.

the thing about returning looted artifacts to their cultures of origin is that, in real life, it's an extremely dicey issue. and when i say that, i'm not saying "and that's why we should not do it in real life nor depict it in fiction", because obviously we should do both of those to the best of our ability. but it isn't straightforward.

in real life, arguments made by museums in looter countries against repatriation often bring up how there isn't always a solid record of which pieces of art and culture were stolen or parted with via coercion, and which were traded for willingly; or refuse to recognize the sovereignty of a nation of people who claim ownership of an item and prefer to return it to a modern-day government that does not represent them; or, alternatively, bring up the fact that the modern-day country requesting the artifact "back" was not the same country that created it, and use that as evidence that they don't have any claim to it at all. there are political considerations, there are diplomatic considerations, there are military considerations. it's a whole thing.

in the setting of dragon age, you don't have all of these exact problems. but in a scenario where we're to understand that this semi-decentralized guild of treasure hunters has recently shifted gears toward repatriation, we don't have zero problems. the principle one is that thedas as a continent and the states within it don't actually function the same way our world does, meaning "repatriation" might not even be a consideration for anyone who isn't an elf, but i don't wanna get into that. there are far more granular issues instead.

for example, one story in tevinter nights follows a band of lords pulling off a heist. does this mean stealing from the living is above board, but robbing the dead is frowned upon unless you give some of it back to the descendants? how old does an artifact have to be before it stops being fair game? how culturally significant does it have to be, and how do you even measure that?

what if you're a long-time member just in this for the plunder, and now that your guildmates are advocating all this scholarly and/or culturally respectful stuff, you're just pretending to go along with it and palming smaller relics for resale? what responsibility does the lords of fortune as a guild have to penalize you? what ability?

what if you proudly present a dalish clan with a burial urn you found outside of its context, and then their keeper gets fucking pissed at you because that was supposed to stay in the ground, you idiot, and now you and your guildmates are suspected of defiling a grave? on the flip side, what if you DO defile that grave, and return the relics inside for a finder's fee alongside the lie that you got it from the real graverobber, because offering a bounty for returned cultural artifacts creates a demand for them?

what if your opinion of what counts as "sacred" is different from someone else's, on a cultural in addition to an individual basis?

what if two dalish clans who hate each other place a claim on the same relic?

what if, perhaps, you have a kossith contact in your guild, living the qun outside of a qunari community. and you've been giving her all of your qunari artifacts to study, in the spirit of goodwill and cultural exchange. and then one day on your way to her house a ben-hassrath steps out of the shadows and politely requests the tablet you're holding, and also directions to your contact's residence, because as far as the ariqun is concerned, you've been giving vital pieces of qunari culture and history to someone who isn't a qunari?

what interesting scenarios! what rich stories we could get out of them! even the barest reference to some of these issues would suggest a more multifaceted view of a faction, and entice players into selecting it for their character.

and at time of writing, i'm still waiting to see anything like them in the game.

[antivancastle]

all of you who are playing a zevwarden kid rook who’s a crow are so mean to zevran 😂 it’s such good angst though so i can definitely see the appeal

[incandescentflower]

There's lots of reasons I really enjoyed Fangs of Fortune. It has the makings of the type of story that grabs me and holds me for a long time. Ships that are substantive and about the characters knowing each other, challenges outside the pairings that they face together, themes that can be dug into and explored and interpreted in many, many ways while still being very clear on the message of the story, extensive mythology that can be built upon and played in and expanded on and on and on (even if not perfect) and that mythology allows for big sweeping narrative alterations, like characters coming back perhaps not permanently or in the same way - but allows for the recognition of the loss of love and the significance in one's life and the value of second chances without removing the stakes from the story completely.

[3gremlins]

so i've seen a lot of (really good/thoughtful) critique about how the lords of fortune not stealing from everybody indiscriminately is weird and kind of sanitized and doesn't really make sense in-world, and i see you all, totally agree and think you have very good points but also

i kinda saw them having a Qunari History Artifact Specialist on staff as specifically an Isabela thing as in "last time i stole a random cultural object b/c it was shiny it was a huge pain in the ass actually and i'd like to not do that ever again"

like kind of an in joke with izzy/da2 meta nod more than anything (which fair, doesn't make sense canonically and is jarring in world but i really think it's just there as an isabela joke and not meant to be anything more. i know there's party banter with taash that tries to justify it more which i agree is extra silly-like they're pirates, they should do morally grey pirate things and it's not as fun if they're not a little morally questionable. but i like the idea that isabela specifically is like "okay we should maybe double check if anyone is going to care about this object and follow us through hell and high water just to get it back. there's no way im going to befriend a disaster bisexual willing to fight for me twice")