Vacation's what I wanna do
Party on my beach, fun for me and you
We don't need a holiday to start to celebrate
Repeat after me, "I need a vacation"
-Vitamin C "Vacation".
Pokemon Summer~
Fact is oghren loved branka in the way y’all can only put in fanfic & wattpad kidnapped by one direction stories. Oghren loved his paragon so much that he drove his entire house into the dust just for a CHANCE to fight for her. 2 entire years he spent banging on the doors of the assembly/palace demanding she not be abandoned. Of course it drove him to drinking and raging and drinking some more, he was taught that paragons are living GODS (pretty much) and was contending with the cruel, shattering reality that it’s been reduced to just face and politics. And there’s a lot to unpack about political corruption there but there is also a note to be made about how far into the abyss the darkspawn have pushed his proud people into over generations upon generations. He isn’t just mourning branka he is mourning honor and culture and religion. His OWN but also his PEOPLE’S. You’re not allowed to talk to him about it though uhh fart joke - here, hold that
There's a dialogue chain (at least with high approval) with Oghren that's honestly kind of heartbreaking. If you say it's been an honor to fight with him, Oghren REALLY shows off his vulnerability. That NO ONE has said THAT about HIM in a very, very long time.
and if you help him move on from Branka and get with Felsi (the first time) he fully admits that he was (and still kind of it) a trainwreck of a human...but that the Warden saved him.
THEN THEN THEN he says it's an honor to fight with you and that he wants to go out and be the warrior YOU taught him to be. YOU. (In my case an elf mage girl from the Circle ("You're not so bad, for an elf")
This man is direct from Orzammar. With decades of "caste is everything, it's determined by birth, it's innate and who you are" and here's Ol' Oghren going NOPE. SEE THAT SKINNY LITTLE ELF LADY SMOOCHIN' ON THE OTHER WARDEN? SHE TAUGHT ME TO BE A REAL WARRIOR.
It's wild because my first playthrough I took Oghren for surface level (no pun) and HATED him...but on my sixth playthrough it FINALLY HAPPENED. I get the story they're telling with him. Oghren...he's just fine with me. My Warden (Surana) honestly probably considers him her best friend other than maybe Morrigan.
i hurd dragon age was cancel but ROOK!!
i hurd dragon age was cancel but ROOK!!
and right then a… feeling instantly flooded evie’s chest… it was a somewhat familiar feeling, not too dissimilar from how she herself felt towards her mother and brother… but this…
this was very different.
precise, thick…?? Smoldering… all encompassing??
No… whole… one… only…
… it was an emotion, she realized, that could only exist between two people who held two halves of each others hearts in the palm of their hands…
solas loved her mother
undoubtedly, so perfectly… eternally…
whole, one…
only
vigilskept asked:
#Want that because this is what bothers me about one of fandom's fave banters between Varric and Solas#And I kind of hate that this is the go to banter to show off Solas's worldview because every time I read it#I can't help but see Varric as a writers mouthpiece for some of the shit I see said IRL all the damn time#The good Jew I mean dwarf is the kind that doesn't mind loosing ties to his cultural roots#He thinks the culture he is forced to assimlate into is great actually#And everyone who cares about dwarven culture is stuck in the past and weird <- this is exactly what i was getting at yes!!!!!! it's present in da2's writing as well with bartrand's attachment to their dwarven heritage (and obsession with making money??? oh my god????) as the "root of evil" that causes everything to go wrong in their lives like it's WILD how people are so willing to give bioware a pass on this in the earlier games!
zundely replied:
Yes!!! Thank you so much for that whole post honestly, this is something that has been bothering me about Varric’s character for basically my whole fandom experience and it’s kind of infuriating to see it be indentified as a problem in the writing with characters like Sera (who then get shit on by the fandom for it) when it’s just as present in characters like Varric who are fandom favourites. And it hurts me specifically with Varric because like… this is the one dwarven prespective we get through all 2 games. And it sucks so bad, considering how games are all to happy to play fast and loose with a lot of more questionable worldbuilding of Thedas when it comes to dwarves (yeah I love how one major dwarven presence in all of DA games is Carta the dwarven underground crime syndicate that controls whole of lyrium economy/s) and Varric’s character is not only never used to really offset all this, Bioware seems all to happy to play up the stereotype with him but like in a funny way. Bertrand was the bad greedy dwarf who only cares about money and dwarven things, Varric is the cool funny dwarf who mentions people owing him money but in a funny way so that’s cool.
So when in Veilguard there are still elements that are deeply problematic (like the whole “the Time of the Titans is over” bit if you have Harding overcome Titan’s rage) and people compare that conflict to Varric’s whole shtic I get angry because… no you don’t see? This is what got us INTO this mess. Varric’s complete rejection of everything dwarven that never gets commented on by the narrative and is even shown, in opposition to Solas, as 100% correct way to approach the issue is why player comes out of DA2 and DAI viewing dwarven culture as something not worthy of saving. Because one character who is also not so subtly a creator’s pet, sees it as regressive and unecessary.
lord I can’t believe all the AI fic shit is STILL going on
Commission for @tethrawke
A moment from a fanfic Hope & Dream
HummingbirdPerching.png
all i’m saying is that the dao romanceables are stronger than me bc if i was alistair zevran morrigan or leliana and i had a fearless beautiful dwarven party leader who had been delicately deflecting all flirtations because her heart was elsewhere, and then her face lit up like the sun when she saw some guy in the marketplace, only for that guy to tell her that her father has died, horribly, and then immediately follow that up by revealing he (the guy, not her father) apparently never thought he had a serious future with her and has now knocked up and married some other woman he just met, i would have chosen violence. i would have eaten his heart in the marketplace