#optional-quests

[the-owl-tree]

big fan of this dubious creature so far

[vigilskeep]

hey harker! very much enjoying the lucanis/illario/general crow posting, and im gonna encourage more: now that you’ve had some time to sit with the game i was really curious to hear more about your opinion on lucanis becoming first talon. i can’t help but feel like it’s completely glossed over that lucanis is definitely going to get chewed up by this job in most save states. i have mixed feelings about it personally - but setting those aside because i’m asking about yours.

i TRULY cannot express this enough: that villa is a tomb and if we do not get him out of there we are burying him in it

lucanis does not want this job. he has straight up canonically always avoided thinking about this by assuming he would die before it becomes something he has to deal with. he reacts with paralysed disbelief to being given it and seems to have barely registered it for the rest of the game. and even if he did want it, lucanis is not capable of this job. none of his skillsets are managing people, or making ruthless calls, or watching out for himself. the only driving force behind him being pushed into this is caterina, who will not be around to do the admin and protect him from external threats forever. and she only wants him to do it in the first place because she had a good heir—his mother—and has needed to project that dead daughter onto lucanis for his whole life, to believe she hasn’t already gambled and irrevocably lost her family’s future decades ago. but lucanis’ incapacity to ever say no to her, which is what lets him stay that eternal teacher’s pet, is one of the most obvious shining examples why he would be so bad for the job!

it would be an uphill battle for anyone to recover control of an assassin house that until last week was being run by your cousin who tried to kill you. it would be an uphill battle for anyone to lead the crows in the aftermath of the antaam occupation. it would be an uphill battle for anyone to cope with the fact that relying on viago and teia—which lucanis with his resources and skills has no choice but to do here, even if he didn’t simply like them and make choices based on liking people because he is not a strategist—presents them as an alliance that any other ambitious talon must cut down to get anywhere. three out of eight of the talons is such a ludicrously dangerous number. it does not take an overwhelmingly brilliant mind to notice that there’s more of us than there are of them

the best man for the job would still be fighting for their life, and lucanis is far from the best man. caterina was! and she still lost five children and six grandchildren holding it! that’s so many! have you guys ever seen that one post about people who kept getting a new outdoor cat every time the last one got eaten by cougars and it was pointed out they were basically just feeding cats to the cougars. that’s what caterina dellamorte was doing having kids

the points in lucanis’ favour off the top of my head are the weight of the dellamorte name and reputation, that his victory over illario was decisive and public, and simply the fear factor that he is a god slayer and, lest we forget, a fucking abomination. is that enough to keep him alive? for how long? under what level of constant anxiety and moral degradation for his very soft over-caffeinated heart? all for the questionable gain of several large and empty villas and the privilege of dragging out the slow and lingering death of a family that, you guessed it, you love it, it’s the thedas favourite: has no! next! generation! heirs! at all!!!

(unless illario has a bunch of kids somewhere. i think that would be objectively pretty funny, a sentence i managed to type most of before feeling ill. oh god we need to get them out.)

i apologise that my tone here is somewhat hysterical but i have been living in the mind of my rook, a character very aware of the realities of crow politics who loves lucanis very much. it does not surprise me that lucanis was once again incapable of even conceptualising saying no to his grandmother and accepted the title, or that the idea of abandoning her legacy and his family would seem insurmountable to him when he has been raised to believe it’s all he’s for and he is the last one shouldering the weight. but i am saying this with total and absolute confidence: this is another prison and he is going to die in there if nobody gets him out.

[musubiki]

it's been a while since i've drawn but heres some rough concept ideas for a new store-type npc to add to the roster 🎭

[thosewildcharms]

the thing about the grimpop kiss is that it was a GOOD kiss. like subjective opinions about chemistry aside, the writers could have played this MUCH differently. after years of insisting there's zero attraction or desire between them this could have happened mid season as a comedic sort of "freeze two seconds in as they mutually realize this is fucking terrible and pull back in horror" kiss that would finally shut the shippers up but nope! they built it up all season long and when it finally happened they were both LOCKED IN until they weren't. and yeah they can totally walk this back in the first five seconds of the next season OR they can choose to be hilarious about it and have them argue about who kissed who and insist they absolutely did not enjoy it at all and then immediately kiss again.

[yuzuuu4]

protective bf era

[twistedappletree]

Why is one of the homophobic dudebro arguments against hansry always “Theresa is the canon romance, she’s Henry’s true love” ???????

Like ok, fine, if that’s how you wanna play your game then by all means, go for it. But considering she wasn’t in the second game at all besides a few casual mentions, it’s pretty clear she wasn’t meant to be the dev canon romance. It also doesn’t negate the fact that Hans and Henry have been through the most together. They probably know each other better than anyone else in their lives.

Falling for each other was pretty much inevitable, either in a platonic or romantic way—so even if Warhorse had restricted romance options to only Theresa, Hans and Henry would still be the canon Relationship™️

[anerol152]

Season of Ikea be like:

[terramythos]

that post says it but I think it's extremely important to reiterate that the very first thing g'raha does is deceive and manipulate you and that was back in a fucking realm reborn. yeah it's jokes and it seems pointless at the time but holy fucking shit does that behavior stay relevant from the moment he re-enters the story to present day. like lmao

[too-many-rooks]

if you'll be my model?

[relaxtimestwo]

⊹ . ݁˖ Stelle x Firefly (part 2) . ݁₊ ⊹

Firefly is introducing Penacony's various attractions to Stelle! ✩

I hope we get more dreampeek calls in future updates. Especially for past characters that don't have much lore like Qingque and Luka. It's nice getting little scraps of characterisation!

Also, I love how the consumables look in Penacony! They're so fun and colourful! I just had to draw the two of them interacting with the items.

[ganondoodle]

i might be thinking too much about this rather irrelevant background story for the ancient queen and ganondorf (.. yes still botw2/totk rewrite ................ its background stuff you dont get to see, it would just be a line in a hidden diary and some environtmental story telling- that bracelet being in his room- wrote a longer text post about it today but uh .. heres a doodle that took me too long to make bndksbnsd)

[vigilskeep]

as a fellow rook de riva player i’m really curious how sol took the whole… house egrativi being founded with the specific intention of taking in orphaned kids to become crows. final nail in the coffin moment for my rook personally

this plot thread was the first and easiest target of my mental rewrites because it just... doesn’t make sense, to me? functionally, regardless of thematically. like, i think it suffers the most obviously from the writers not really getting into how the crow power structure works. crow houses are business ventures that require money and manpower. you can’t just start one with a name and a dream while everyone smiles approvingly. also, you can’t just not have belonged to one in the first place! i spent all game trying to figure out if he belonged to the de rivas or the cantoris or the dellamortes or someone else, and when he started his own house at the end of his arc (again, ???) it was very apparent to me that this is just a misinterpretation that there is a general force of crows and the houses are simply nobility among them. no, somebody paid for your training and they want back on that investment so they own you. also, taking in orphans being your grand new venture for the crows is both insane and doesn’t make sense because the crows already do that as one of their main recruiting strategies. teia cantori is standing right in front of you as the evidence!

my provisional rewrite which i think works fairly smoothly without losing too much is that jacobus & his cousin are the sole surviving heirs of one of the three houses whose talons were killed in the antaam plot in tevinter nights: balazar, valisti, and arainai. (my self-indulgent vote is balazar, because the tevinter nights context of the dynamic with teia and viago is juicy. there’s no real reason for it to be arainai and bringing in that name for no reason would be cruel, but you could definitely cook with it if you really wanted to go for it.) naturally, these kids already have a grudge against the antaam, one that teia and viago are struggling to corral while having to treat them like crow hierarchy equals (iirc a balazar or valisti would actually technically outrank them both), and the elder cousin goes and gets himself killed trying. we’re now forced to operate with one of the four houses present in treviso being led by an even younger grieving child who is obviously a liability. this should be good for paralleling lucanis’ immediate future and highlighting what the crows do to their younger generations. in my most ideal of worlds where the crows are truly crow-ish on screen, maybe you’d have a plot choice with no good answers like...

a) teia would present this option. you decide to take a risk on this kid and believe in him and let him stand on his own two feet, and this actually pays off with sudden help in your fight against the governor like it does in the game. he chooses this idealistic, childish direction for his house where they’re taking in kids who have lost their families like him and it will all be one big family again! and he says some suddenly very nervewracking things about how they’ll understand it’s the best place to be eventually and one of the kids got hurt in the governor’s estate but heir has promised they’ll take care of it and train them all so hard they’ll never lose anyone again. he’s going to make sure of it. you’ll see! they’ll take the best contracts until they’re godslayers just like you! there’s a final shot of him standing very small and very alone. and that’s on you

b) viago would present this option. you decide this kid is too much of a risk to count on while you’re trying to save the city and the world, and maybe you care that he’s also a danger to himself. you back house de riva to forcibly seize jacobus’ house and all its assets to get the job done with, while jacobus himself is locked up out of harm’s way until the fight is over. this route also helps in your fight against the governor, there’s no sudden chaotic helping hand but everything goes smoother and cleaner, and hey, there are no children in the fight, if that kind of thing matters to you. however, all the ferocity of jacobus’ grudges turns on you and viago. he hates you. and letting him loose afterwards and giving back his house would be viago, the most paranoid man in thedas, handing a knife back to someone who wants to kill him. (which is, i suppose, the utmost charitable interpretation of viago’s main reasoning to keep hold of a bunch of assets, but no less true.) so they’re just keeping hold of jacobus... indefinitely. and that’s on you

but that’s me being self-indulgent and making it a bigger choice lmao. in answer to your actual question about my rook rather than this massive tangent, yes it was dizzying to stand there as another child was given full crow status and already planning to train other children. the cycles are cyclinggg

[neckromantics]

petition for larian studios to make a dialogue option where you ask astarion for a hug bc honestly i think we could both use one a majority of the time.

[aesopsharpmybeloved]

Playing KCD 2:

Me as Henry, closely after the falling out with Hans, but because of Tumblr knowing exactly what can happen: "Oh my god, I can't believe I'm going to fuck this prat."

The catchpole: "Wait, you don't have to-"

Me, as Henry: "Oh, no, I will."

[startagainaprologue]

i doubt i could find the post but ik theres one out there thats kind of like 'wow whoever was playing hypothetical mira rpg before the start of isat sucked at having their characters properly leveled'. and idk why but imagining isat as part of someones specific save file of the mira rpg is rlly fun

[childofthestone]

got an anon a while back asking for my train of thought on saying harding doesnt get to feel upset about the titans. its because she was the poorest decision for a vessel. she is a surface dwarf, a true fereldan, and an andrastian to boot. shunned by orzammar, sure ill give her that, but narratively it makes no sense. we are not talking about real-life connotations, diaspora, etc. there isnt a good watsonian explanation for HER being a mouthpiece for the titans, and thats what it all boils down to in the end. this is a story of fantasy, but things also need to make sense. DWARF ROOK should have been the vessel. or cadash. or they should have introduced a compelling dwarven companion who wasnt a callback. heck, if you wanted a good legacy character, WHERE IS SANDAL. WHERE IS SHALE. they just decided to tack on the titan storyline to her because hey, shes part of the whole thing anyway, right? we already put her in the books and comics! lets make her pray to the Stone in vows & vengeance even though she actually doesnt believe in dwarven theology. WAIT WHO SAID THAT.

its disrespectful to the dwarves lol. like at least give harding some real skin in the game. a real crisis of faith or some sort of indication that shes ever really truly wanted to connect to her people. whoever was in charge didnt put much thought into it and its obvious. THATS why harding doesnt get to be upset. because theres no real reason why she should be, except for the fact that she, a DEVOUT ANDRASTIAN, just got slapped in the face with the fact that the Maker most likely doesnt exist. now THAT is a compelling story. but alas.