#read-only memory

[waneella]

Decade art book is available now!

I'm happy to announce that the standard edition from the campaign is now available for purchase! After the funding campaign of Decade has ended, we received many requests to reprint the book. We’re grateful for your interest and it means a lot to us!

The book is available exclusively in Read-Only Memory shop here:

 http://bit.ly/4e2iF7q

Decade is an art book that collects my pixel art artworks from 2013 to 2023, processes of making them with my comments, and a few words about how I became a pixel artist. This is the most comprehensive collection of my illustrations in a book to date.

Thames&Hudson edition

There's also a Thames&Hudson edition available! It has a different cover art, but the content is the same. In case you prefer it more, you can find it here:

https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/waneella-pixelscapes-hardcover

Thank you very much for your support!

[grrlmusic]

WipEout: Futurism

[segadriven]

Read-Only Memory, the publishers of SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works, SEGA Dreamcast: Collected Works and SEGA Arcade: Pop-Up History, are going to open a Kickstarter for a new edition of SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works called SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis: Ultimate Works.

[honourablejester]

Oh, I didn’t know that.

I was listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on youtube, and browsing the comments several people mentioned …

Okay. The song is about the real sinking of the freighter the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior in 1975. And there’s a line in the song:

“In the Maritime Sailor’s Cathedral,

The Church Bell chimed till it rang twenty nine times,

For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald”

Which references something that the actual Maritime Church in Detroit did in honour of the ship’s crew. And I just found out in those youtube comments for his song that when Gordon Lightfoot died in May last year (2023), the Maritime Church rang those bells again, this time 30 times. Once for every man on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and once more for Gordon Lightfoot.

That’s … That is a memorial I would be proud to have earned. And proud to give. I do like that. A lot.

Apparently, the Split Rock Lighthouse on Lake Superior also lit its beacon in honour of him.

Sorry. I’m having … extremely maritime sort of feelings over here. Songs and memorials, bells and beacons, and the ways we carry memory forward. That’s … that’s a good memorial. I like that.

[keferon]

The tac net crash chapter is one of my favorites so far~

Ah and. Guess what. I just discovered that including this post, I made 50 pieces of fanart for Mistakes on mistakes until.. I’m so sane and normal about this story can you tell👍

[starcurtain]

Detangling Mydei's Backstories Backstory?

My last post, casting doubt on 3.2's revelation that Mydei's immortality is deliberate on his part, led to some interesting discussion in the comments that definitely reinforced my earlier thoughts that the inconsistencies in Mydei's backstory are too numerous to be accidental. Star Rail is not known for its flawless continuity (Robin and Sunday's backstory, I'm looking at you lol), but usually the inconsistencies are not so overt, and repeated so many times, that they become central to the entire plot of a character.

So I wanted to refine my earlier theory a bit: I'm cautiously optimistic that there are enough signs that the inconsistencies in Mydei's backstory are deliberate, and that the Mydei of the current cycle in Amphoreus is actively experiencing an entanglement between two different timelines, without (yet) consciously recognizing the incompatibility of his own "memories."

When we work from the standpoint that the events of Mydei's backstory can be separated into two distinct timelines, the inconsistencies vanish:

The "Sea of Souls" Timeline

This is the most prominent timeline, and the one that appears most accurate for "our" Mydei. In this timeline, Mydei was thrown into the Sea of Souls as a tiny infant and spent the first nine years of his life there. This is confirmed both in the flashback we're provided early in 3.1, as well as in Mydei's voicelines and character stories.

After nine years, he crawled out of the sea (possibly motivated by witnessing Tribbie's "star" in the sky). On the same day (or very near it), he met with a band of Kremnoan exiles.

Whether this was a larger group already, constituting a small "detachment" army of exiles, or just started with the five exiled friends and Mydei then grew into a small army by picking up other exiles over time, is still unclear. However, at this point, Mydei makes no mention of returning to Kremnos and instead goes straight from "leaving the sea" to "living ten years in exile:"

This is the key point of inconsistency between the two "halves" of Mydei's story--either he lived in Kremnos or he didn't. We can handwave here and say "Yes, he returned to Kremnos with his friends and they just hid their identities, leaving Kremnos years later in a self-imposed exile," but the story gives us absolutely no indication that this realistically could have happened. Mydei never once mentions hiding his identity, changing his appearance, or living a double life in the city, and never explains how he would have had access to the inner city of Kremnos ("as befitting a crown prince") and the royal library, yet still go totally unnoticed by his father or anyone loyal to Eurypon, including Krateros. (There's also no explanation at all for why he would have wanted to return to a city ruled by someone who tried to murder him and where he would have had to live life under a fake identity just to get by, but you know...)

Instead, the game does give us several pieces of information indicating that the five Kremnoan exiles did not return to Kremnos after meeting Mydei:

First, Mydei's character stories confirm that Mydei deliberately hid his name while traveling in exile across Amphoreus, indicating that he knew he would be recognized by Eurypon/Eurypon's loyalists if he didn't hide his identity. This awareness suggests it is extremely unlikely that Mydei could have returned to Kremnos without being identified:

This also suggests that, at this point in this timeline, no one in Castrum Kremnos knew for sure that Mydeimos had survived being thrown into the Sea of Souls and returned. This is further confirmed by a memory fragment where Krateros says there has been a "rumor" that the leader of the exiled Kremnoan army is one who "defied death." Krateros alone makes the assumption that this could be Mydei and decides to defect to aid him:

This memory suggests two things clearly: Mydei was not living in Kremnos at the time Krateros defected, and the exile of all of Mydei's friends must have taken place before they met Mydei, years in the past, as there is no way an entire small army could have been exiled from Kremnos, with Mydei in toe, and not at all attract Krateros's attention until after they were gone.

The idea that Mydei never returned to Kremnos is further enforced by Eurypon, who did not recognize Mydei when he confronted him, to the point that he didn't believe Mydei was even Kremnoan. This suggests that Eurypon not only didn't know Mydei's true identity--he'd never seen him before at all, making it extremely unlikely that Mydei was walking around Castrum Kremnos, talking to Chryseus Leo, and reading in the royal library all under some false identity for years. Eurypon certainly wouldn't have been capable of exiling someone he'd never seen before from Kremnos, in any case!

Therefore, we can assume the series of events in this timeline is pretty straightforward: Mydei entered the Sea of Souls as a baby, came out nine years later, went straight into a life of exile with his five friends, amassed power and support for ten years, and then returned to seek vengeance on his father.

The only remaining question in this timeline becomes "When did Mydei join up with Okhema?"

I think, in this timeline, it makes the most sense for Mydei to have only joined up with Okhema after killing his father. In 3.1, Mydei confirms to Phainon that all his friends died before he was able to kill his father, and that none of them ever made it to Okhema:

Therefore, the final order of events for the more prominent timeline is:

Dumped into the sea as an infant, nine years in the Sea of Souls

Ten years in exile with his friends amassing strength and support

Returns to Kremnos, kills his father, and the last of his friends dies that day

Then he defects to Okhema, leading any of the Kremnoans willing to follow him there.

By itself, this story makes perfect sense. If this was all the information we'd been given, there wouldn't have been any gaps.

Unfortunately, we also have a whole other set of information that massively conflicts with these events, which can only really be explained two ways: Either Hoyo messed up (again) and really dropped the consistency ball when it comes to writing Mydei's backstory... Or there's an entire separate timeline going on. Personally, I'm leaning toward the latter, because there are just too many seemingly deliberate fingers in the story pointing toward the inconsistencies for them to feel entirely unintentional to me.

Therefore, I propose that Mydei's memories are actually getting infiltrated by a second, entirely different timeline:

The "Gorgo Lives" Timeline

From 3.0 all the way to 3.2, we're given numerous pieces of information that point to a wholly different order to the events of Mydei's life, contrasting the story that Mydei tells Phainon in the Garden. At first, these events seem scattered and nonsensical, contradicting the "main" timeline in too many ways to be anything but errors... But when taken as a whole, we can build a second coherent timeline out of these events if we make one assumption: There is a timeline where Gorgo lived longer.

In the second timeline which is intruding on Mydei's memories, there appears to be one key point of divergence: Gorgo did not die dueling Eurypon. Either she never challenged him to the duel, or (more likely) she was never successfully poisoned, and therefore it's possible she won the duel, allowing her to rescue Mydei from the sea.

Working from that possibility, a second complete timeline emerges:

Mydei was thrown into the Sea of Souls as an infant but did not drift there for nine years. Instead, he was rescued and brought back to Kremnos, where he was allowed to grow up in the inner city, with access to both Chryseus Leo, who served as his teacher, and access to the royal library, which he is proud enough of to call "his" library. He is able to lead Phainon and the Trailblazer around Castrum Kremnos even in its ruined state because he grew up there, spending enough time there to know the city like the back of his hand:

This is where we can slot in the inconsistent memories Mydei has of Gorgo:

(By the way, although Mydei writes this scene off as a dream, you can actually hear Oronyx's whisper play in the black screen seconds before this "dream" occurs...)

But okay, let's say this is just a wishful dream. Maybe this scene never happened. If all we got of Gorgo supposedly raising Mydei was this moment in 3.1, I might agree that it was just a dream (other than there being no reason to play Oronyx's sound effect there, but you know). However, in 3.2 they then hit us with this:

That's multiple moments now pointing to a timeline where Gorgo raised Mydei. Once is handwave-able--twice? That's deliberate.

In this secondary timeline, Mydei appears to have grown up as Kremnos's beloved crown prince, being warmly embraced by his people (at least until Kremnos fell into calamity). Apparently his days consisted of eating pomegranates, training for combat, playing with Kremnos's kids, and hanging out with his five friends. We see snippets of this idyllic life (along with his five friends appearing to be roughly the same age as him--something that likely wouldn't be true in the "main" timeline, by the way) on Mydei's long march back into Castrum Kremnos:

I know some people took this to be Mydei hallucinating or just wishfully imagining a life where he was able to be happy with his friends, possibly even some metaphorical "encountering the souls of the departed in a paradise," but I don't think this is true. Every single time Mydei phases in and out of this "hallucination," the visual effect and the sound effect of Oronyx are distinctly played--the exact same sound and visuals that play when Trailblazer activates Oronyx's prayer to jump between timelines.

Mydei himself doesn't seem to quite understand what is happening to him in this moment, as you can hear him stumble and pant as he repeatedly goes through flashes of Oronyx's power. You can listen to comparison video clips on the prior post I made about Mydei's backstory.

Furthermore, if we work from the assumption that these moments actually represent a rupture between timelines, then the rest of the inconsistencies can finally be cleared up:

In 3.0, Mydei says that his choice to leave Castrum Kremnos was not a forced exile but a "self-imposed" one:

And this aligns with what he stated in the Garden of Life to Phainon, that he and his friends "left Castrum Kremnos" to go into this self-imposed exile, rather than having never returned to Kremnos from the sea:

Furthermore, this also aligns with the angry NPCs in the past version of Castrum Kremnos that Trailblazer and Castorice travel back to:

Remember that this version of Castrum Kremnos was supposed to be occurring while Eurypon was still alive, so there is absolutely no way this line makes sense in the same universe where Eurypon didn't even know Mydei had survived. There isn't any way, in "our" timeline, that Mydei could have been both the "crown prince" of Kremnos for these NPCs and completely unknown to his father, the king.

These NPCs, furthermore, directly accuse Mydei of "deserting Kremnos," suggesting that Mydei was living in Castrum Kremnos as their prince, and then abandoned them to join Aglaea in Okhema, getting himself and everyone who went with him labelled as "traitors to Kremnos" in the process. None of this makes sense in the context of a timeline where no one in Kremnos knew he had even survived.

Instead, all of these elements point to a different sequence of events:

Gorgo lived, likely winning her duel and thereby (likely) giving her the right to save Mydei from the Sea of Souls and bring him back to Kremnos. He was raised by his mother as the beloved crown prince of Kremnos. Then, years later, as his father and Nikador both descended into full madness, Mydei and the Kremnoan detachment defected.

But what would have triggered this sudden need to defect after years of leading Kremnos as a well-liked prince?

The flashback between Mydei and Eurypon actually suggests a possible reason:

Apparently, at some point, in some timeline, Mydei knew about Eurypon's plan to break Nikador's divinity into separate parts and seal him away, harnessing the power of their titan for himself.

Yet the Mydei of 3.0 seems to have no idea about any of this, never able to give any explanation for how Nikador has degraded so much nor why Nikador is seemingly unkillable. Castorice, Mem, and the Trailblazer have to come up with the idea to go back in time to the past Kremnos by themselves, because Mydei never makes any mention of there ever having been a plot to break up and seal away Nikador's divinity, even when they walk past the very blades that did the sealing.

Finally, there's one last piece of conflicting information: While talking to Phainon in the Garden of Life, Mydei states that all of his friends died before the detachment could ever join up with Okhema and that all of their deaths occurred by the time he went to kill his father. But this conflicts with the NPCs above, who state that Mydei had already defected to Okhema and joined the Flame Chase Journey as a Chrysos Heir while his father was still alive.

This inconsistency is further reinforced by a memory fragment with Krateros, who confirms that Mydei had joined up with Okhema already before killing his father:

Putting all of this together, the complete series of events for this second timeline becomes:

Infant Mydei is quickly rescued from the Sea of Souls, is instead raised by his mother, and grows up as the crown prince of Castrum Kremnos with his five friends.

At some point, years later, he discovers Eurypon's plot to break up and imprison Nikador's divinity, and he and his friends and supporters defect from Kremnos as a result.

Either they go straight to Okhema (I'm inclined to say that "ten years of wandering" doesn't fit, chronologically speaking, into this secondary timeline) or they do wander a bit, but ultimately, Mydei reaches Okhema and aligns with Aglaea before killing his father.

After aligning the Kremnoan Detachment with Okhema, Mydei returns to Castrum Kremnos to kill his father, possibly to halt Eurypon's evil plan to harness Nikador's power.

At some point in this timeline, presumably before Mydei returns to kill his father, Gorgo likely still dies (possibly killed by Eurypon and/or Nikador), which explains why the Gorgo in the Sea of Souls seems to be the one convinced that she raised Mydei.

And this is just pure personal speculation, because there isn't enough evidence to really confirm it, but I almost feel like we can even pinpoint how/when the whole decision to defect to Okhema took place. At the end of Mydei's flashbacks to the "peaceful" Kremnos, Peucesta says that Mydei has been away from Kremnos for a while.

Leonnius assumes that Mydei was away on some apparently extended training trip, but this moment specifically ends with Gorgo welcoming Mydei home and asking him one very important question:

Obviously these lines are doing double duty, symbolically welcoming the present Mydei back to the ruins of Castrum Kremnos and asking him whether he's finally ready to take on his role as the "Guardian of Amphoreus." But as the wiki notes, this takes place in a flashback to the past, and for the "Mydei of the past" (aka the Mydei of the alternate timeline), this could very well have been Mydei disappearing from Kremnos to make contact with Aglaea in Okhema, and Gorgo questioning him about his decision to commit himself to the Flame Chase Journey, leading up to an ultimate and permanent defection from Kremnos. (This is just speculation though, trying to tie the last few loose ends together.)

Anyway, when taken from this perspective, that there are two separate backstories here, one from a world where Gorgo lived and the more prominent one where she died, we can sort all the seeming inconsistencies in Mydei's backstory into two surprisingly tidy and complete timelines.

I haven't yet found anything in any Mydei scene that doesn't fit one of these two scenarios, so I'm starting to definitely feel optimistic here that this writing was intentional, and that the "contradictory" backstory we're seeing for Mydei isn't "the worst continuity Star Rail has served up to date," but instead an actual deliberate choice to present us with a character whose memories are a hodge-podge of two divergent timelines, snippets of one timeline constantly erupting and "filling in the blanks" of the other.

I think this would be a fascinating way to lead up to the idea that Amphoreus's world isn't real, that it's a cobbled together story or set of memories that someone is barely holding together, and that it's constantly cyclical in nature, with events repeating with slight variations across times. The idea that Mydei is actually experiencing two different sets of memories crushed together into a tangled jumble and that he's only just now starting to become aware of the discrepancies would be such an excellent way to reinforce the "unreality" of Amphoreus's plot as a whole.

I really hope this is the direction that they take the story... Or at least that I won't one day be looking at all my Mydei posts and sadly thinking to myself that I put a lot more thought into the character's backstory than his own writers did, RIPPPPP. 😂😂😂

Cope with me, people!

[starscream-is-my-wife]

This is part 1 of a continuation for my other post where LL Megatron gets trapped in the G1 universe, I was thinking about how someone would go insane in this cartoon world and thought "what if Megatron had someone else to accompany him" so, I gave Starscream an existential crisis

Edit: pt 2 here

[may12324]

Volatile Memory, by Seth Haddon

HAWK is a consciousness trapped inside a mask in the shape of a Hawk—or is she just code that thinks it was once alive?

Wylla is a scavenger in need of a payday. Selling HAWK might be her ticket to freedom, but can she justify the sale when the mask speaks back to her?

This is a sapphic tale of revenge and adventure out with Tordotcom July 22nd!

and an alternative version~

[morganbritton132]

There’s a replica of a military tank in the center of the park.

Around the tank is a fence and around the fence, there are multiple signs telling you not to climb on it. The purpose of the tank is to memorialize the soldiers of WWII but currently, Steve Harrington is standing on top of it.

The (only) great thing about a trainee is that Hopper can send Callahan over to handle the trespassing first grader.

He looks away to scan the park and when he looks back, Steve is trying to kick Callahan in the head. Hopper whistles, “Knock it off, Harrington. The sign says no trespassing. Get down.”

Steve explodes, “I. Don’t. Know. How. To. Read!!”

He emphasizes this outburst by ripping off one of his shoes and throwing it at Hopper. It bouncing off his chest and Hopper gives him a flat look, “Get down.”

Steve goes for his other shoe but Hopper is already pass Callahan, grabbing him by the leg and yanking him off the tank. He gets kicked in the gut for his trouble.

He keeps ahold of him, carrying Steve kicking and screaming over to the truck and sitting him on the hood. The whole time thinking, this is new.

Steve’s troublesome but mostly polite. Half the time, Hopper’s just got to tell him to stop doing stuff and he will. He’s never seen a tantrum before.

“You know it’s against the law to hit a cop. What you just did would be called assaulting a police officer,” Hopper say because Steve likes to show off what he knows about law. “Could spend some time in jail.”

“Good,” Steve sniffles. He weakly kicks out again, just barely missing Callahan. “I want to go to jail.”

“That’s good,” Hopper says flatly. “Because that’s where you’re going.”

He picks the kid up again and unceremoniously dumps him in the backseat. He gets in the front. Callahan gets in the passenger seat, asks, “Boss, you’re not really going to..”

Steve’s still crying when Hopper starts the car. He’s eerily quiet about it but Hopper can see the tears in the rearview and he can hear the sniffles. He doesn’t say anything but drive.

He doesn’t go to the precinct despite what he says. He drives out to Benny’s Burgers, parks the kid in a booth, and then plays the cop, “I have some questions.”

Steve has his head down, pillowed by his arms. His shoulders are shaking with tears but his voice is painfully steady when he sniffles, “Need’a lawyer.”

“Callahan is not pressing charges,” Hopper says. “I need to know what happened for my incident report. I gotta explain why you tried to kick his head off his shoulders.”

“Cause he’s a butthead and I hate him.”

Hopper hums, “And what made you angry enough to do that?”

Steve looks up at him.

His watery brown eyes meeting his, and then Steve cries, “Tommy doesn’t want to be my friend anymore!”

Hopper thinks, Jesus Christ.

[akkivee]

they've been potentially changing a lot with the shadow manga, but since maria's final words to shadow were how she loves him and amy's conversation with shadow in the joypolis collab was about how he is loved, i like to think sonic team is still hinting at amy's ability to touch his heart lol

[somegrumpynerd]

A bunch of doodles inspired by @wickjump saying Cross has an eternal kicked puppy look (and steadily devolving into dadmare because y'know. My Brand)

[starscream-is-my-wife]

Thinking about how Megatron has revived Starscream back from the dead more times then he has ever killed him

Love how everyone (including Ratchet and himself) was saying this is a terrible idea, and he did it anyways Megatron said to the people who opposed this that he would just kill Starscream when he acts up again, but it took until cyberverse for a Megatron to kill a Starscream so I highly doubt he would

Of course there's this infamous panel which I love

Look at them, working together, and Starscream getting richer by betting on Megatron

These two if left to their own devices will never stop going back to each other, like a high school couple that does this until their 40s and everyone accepted that they wernt going to stop 20 years ago

[crimsonphantasmagoria]

Veilguard is not about regret

I've seen a lot of discussion going around about the themes of regret in Veilguard. In particular I've seen a couple of related claims thrown around: one, that Rook and the Veilguard companions are supposed to act as parallels/foils to Solas, an example of how to deal with regret healthily, and two, that Rook is a terrible foil to Solas because there's nothing that they've actually done that's worthy of regretting, and anything that they theoretically should regret (like helping disrupt the ritual that freed the Evanuris, whether you think that's a deserving accusation or not) they simply don't. I'm here to tell you that both these perspectives are true, and it's because Veilguard isn't actually about regret.

Let's start off by talking about the companions shall we. Let's list off the regrets in their storylines. Bellara regrets not being more careful and not somehow saving her brother. Taash regrets not making up with their mother before her death. Davrin doesn't actually have one of his own, instead the regret in his storyline is Isseya's regret about what happened with the Griffins. Emmrich's storyline is more about wavering on the brink of a choice, which may cause regret, though I suppose we could include regret about where his friend has ended up in life. Lucanis regrets what happened to his relationship with Illario. Neve regrets Aelia remaining free, and the death of Rana's partner. Harding regrets not seeing through Solas earlier, and also I suppose the fate of the Titans, though I'm not sure I would categorise what she feels about that as regret.

Are you seeing a pattern here? Let's elaborate on it further. While in the Regret Prison, Rook is confronted by three regrets: the loss of the secondary team leader, the loss of the companion who disabled the wards, and the loss of Varric. And the solution to all of these regrets is this: it wasn't your fault. Those companions, they knew the risks, and they volunteered to go into danger. It was their own choice.

Now Solas. Solas has a great many regrets. He regrets tranquilising the Titans. He regrets taking a body. He regrets killing Felassan. He regrets killing the fragment of Mythal that was in Flemeth. He regrets creating the Veil. He may even regret starting his slave rebellion, given everything that followed after, though that memory is unclear what the actual regret is. These are all active choices he made. The only comparable regrets amongst the companion's storylines and Rook are Isseya's, and sort-of Emmrich's. I'll come back to Emmrich later. Isseya's regrets are actually a pretty good comparison point, except, as is obvious, that's not actually Davrin's storyline. Davrin's regrets on the Griffon front are more institutional, and feed into his storyline about having been made into a weapon, and what to do with yourself after your purpose as a weapon has been served. Actually a pretty good parallel with Solas! Except, once again, it wasn't really his choice, was it? And it's certainly not a choice about a horrifying atrocity he comitted.

Which brings us to Solas’s final regret. He regrets Mythal’s death (the first one). Except, that isn't his fault, is it? She chose to go and confront the Evanuris, rather than join the rebellion or run away with Solas. All he did was give her the information that they were interfering with the Blight, information that she would almost certainly have learned for herself eventually, and assuming she would have made the same choice to confront them would still have resulted in her death. The solution is: it wasn't his fault.

This is the regret that is being paralleled, by an overwhelming majority. And they're right, it isn't his fault and he should forgive himself for it. The thing is: this isn't regret. It's a twisted form of grief. Once you realise this, the whole theme starts unravelling, because not all regrets are created equal. I think this is why some people accuse the narrative of excusing Solas, or trying to sweep aside the things he's done: because it is. The whole message of Veilguard is that you should forgive yourself for the things you had no control over, except that Solas did have control over all those other regrets I listed out earlier, and I say that with a great deal of affection. He did that. He can't forgive himself because it wasn't his fault, because it was. Not all regrets are created equal. And the focus on the narrative of 'it wasn't your fault' means that people look for the person whose fault it was, and that blame lands on Mythal. Who does share some responsibility for some of those acts, but again the narrative is about deliberately pushing away culpability. I suppose one could make an argument for blaming Elgar’nan for everything? I think we should blame Elgar’nan for everything.

Indeed, the narrative focuses so hard on the idea of Solas doing everything because of Mythal, because of that twisted grief, that it completely loses sight of the actual reasons he had for doing the things he was doing. The spirits are trapped in the Fade, many of them yearning to access a world they naturally should have access to. The elves have been enslaved for millenia, and have lost almost everything about themselves, including their origins. Mages are either feared and reviled, or use their overwheling power advantage to lord over those who don't have the same access to magic. And let's not forget, two more Blights and the Veil comes down anyway, releasing the Turbo Blight (which he created) onto unsuspecting Thedas. Not to mention there were suggestions in Trespasser that there was something going on with the remaining ancient elves in Uthenara, who apparently vanished from existance along with his agents.

I mentioned earlier that I would come back to Emmrich. That's because his storyline, in my opinion, is the only one that actually depicts the theme they should have been going for with DA4, namely, when presented with a difficult moral choice, what will you do? What are you willing to sacrifice, and for what? In theory, as has been pointed out before, Bellara's archive choice might once have also been this: it is implied by the phrasing of 'free the spirit' that the Nadas Dirthalen was supposed to be a trapped sapient spirit, forced into servitude, rather that a fantasy VI, and the choice at the end would have been do you free the innocent at the cost of the knowledge you could extract? These naturally feed into: do you bring down the Veil, causing a great deal of sorrow and harm but also potentially creating a better, more equal future, or do you refuse to make such a great sacrifice of lives? At the very least, I think this theme would have stayed more true to the setup of Trespasser, as well as the design of the companion binary choice system, and who knows? Perhaps there might even have been a third option.

[shrimpchipsss]

read Living With a Tiger by x_los !

[somewhereincairparavel]

i have ALWAYS promptly looked forward to jason grace's povs in the hoo books to the point where'd I'd flip the pages till I find the words "JASON" and would count the amount of povs he has in the whole book before I even finished reading, so I feel excited knowing that I'll get to his povs soon. there, I said it.

[average-hua-cheng-fan]

another reason i think that xie lian felt an instant connection on the ox cart is because he and hua cheng both grew up in xianle.

there are maybe 4 people still alive that grew up in that culture. based on my own experience, you can pick up on things like accent, cadence, references, and humor that suggest a person is from the same place as you without consciously noticing it. that sense of comfort and similarity probably played into their instant chemistry.