That last reblog is making me think once more about how genius the friendship/rivalry system is. And how frustrating it is that they don’t seem to be carrying that over [to Veilguard].

Outside of a thematic standpoint, it’s just SO GOOD mechanically. Pretty much every other DA game operates on a schema where if your companions don’t like you enough, you don’t get access to their personal quests, and you don’t learn more about them. Which is not great because if you’re someone who’s invested in the world, your best option is to make friends with everyone - which is a valid rp experience but not one that everybody is after! And it can end up encouraging you to think about what the person you’re talking to will like most rather than how your PC would genuinely react.

DA2 instead rewards you for consistency* - thus encouraging you to lean into your character’s pre-established views! You get to have close and meaningful dynamics even with people Hawke doesn’t get on with! It’s genius!

*I do think the one pitfall here - that no Dragon Age game has really solved yet - is that there’s not much space to play with inconsistency or having your PC’s views change over time (and have that impact their relationships in a way that feels realistic).

(I feel like a fun way to play with that could be to separate approval into two distinct stats - one for ‘how much do they like my decisions’ and one for 'how familiar are we’. Food for thought!)

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately idly bouncing between Origins playthroughs. Here’s some fun facts about Attauda Aeducan!

Despite killing Trian, she has been telling anybody who asks that she was framed. Which is so blatantly two-faced that it makes me want to CACKLE. Attauda, not only did you kill Trian, Bhelen didn’t even have to try very hard to get you to do it.

This includes Harrowmont. However - there was a very long gap between me making Attauda and me finishing playing through the origin with her. Which meant that I completely forgot that, Attauda being who she is, I put literally all of her skill points into combat. Which meant no coercion. Which meant I was utterly BLINDSIDED by Harrowmont’s “YOU’RE A TERRIBLE LIAR >:(”

Notably, though, there was a brief moment when she did reflect on it. When Gorim came to visit her in prison, when she was convinced she was going to die, she ended up saying ‘I killed my brother. I deserve my fate.’ Which is SO SO FASCINATING to me.

Staring down execution, in the company of the guy she trusts most in all the world, she admits what she did. And admits that she deserves her punishment. The instant she’s presented with a way out, she snaps right back to her awful, power-hungry self - but in that brief moment, it hit her.

…Which is exactly why she only gets a redemption arc in the main TPoAB timeline where she isn’t the Warden!

Oct 02 - Favourite Origins romance [promptlist here]

This… is a really difficult question, actually.

My secret shame is that I haven’t actually played 75% of the Origins romances in recent memory. When I was a teenager, I played Alistair’s like five different times. I also played Zevran’s, I’m pretty sure. I watched my sister play through at least some of Leliana’s and Morrigan’s. I’ve picked up a bunch of knowledge of all of them by fandom osmosis.

And yes, Morrigan is my canon romance, but - shockingly - I haven’t actually played Ghila all the way to the end of DA:O! When I started writing TPoAB, I was doing a playthrough in conjunction with it. Then my laptop’s hard drive died and took the save data with it and I had to start over. Then my laptop’s hard drive died again and I lost the second save. Then I accidentally overwrote a third save with the DA:O save generator for DA2. Whoops.

The other thing is… I really like all four of them, tbth.

Leliana’s might be my least favourite, but that’s because I’m not the biggest fan of Leliana’s DA:O writing in general (not because of anything about her character, I just think Sheryl Chee wasn’t super used to writing for interactivity at that point in time and it kinda shows). But even then, there’s a lot to like about it. I love how willfully oblivious you can be to her advances in the pre-sex conversation, it’s delightful.

Zevran’s slow burn from physical intimacy into emotional vulnerability is just wonderfully done. ‘I would storm the Black City itself’ is a banger of a line. It’s possibly the best voice-acted romance, too - high praise coming from me and my Claudia Black bias!

I’m writing an entire longfic with a Morriwarden pairing so I don’t think I need to explain how much I love that one. I adore how it twists the Dark Ritual, though - all the ethical murkiness with a non-romanced Morrigan is swept away in favour of brand new ones! She’s saving you but she’s leaving you. She’s having your child, but is it because she wants to or because she has to? SO GOOD. SO JUICY. SO UPSETTING.

And while I’ve mellowed on Alistair a bit as the years have gone by, I have to pay respects to my teenage self who was absolutely head-over-heels for him. The rose conversation is peerless. The potential for high drama is amazing. My first ever playthrough of DA:O, at the age of 14 or so, I made Alistair king and he promptly broke up with me. And I immediately switched the entire xbox off and - on discovering I didn’t have a convenient save prior to this - started the entire game from the beginning again just so I could make it not happen. Which is, imo, the mark of an incredibly well-written story.

So, uh, all of them? I think my answer might be all of them.

Oct 01 - Introduce your Hero of Ferelden [promptlist here]

Art by eldrtchmn.

THIS IS GHILA (any pronouns). I LOVE HIM.

Way back in 2020 or so, I was thinking about the journey from the Brecilian Forest to Ostagar, and the fact that Mahariel makes that journey while infected with the Blight. While sufficiently infected that Merrill notices that they look ill, in fact!

So Ghila was my answer to the question ‘what if Mahariel was really fucked up by that journey?’ He is extraordinarily Blighted - 'it continues killing him even after the Joining’ Blighted, 'makes contact with Urthemiel in his dreams’ Blighted, 'eventually becomes more Shriek than elf’ Blighted.

So Ghila was my answer to the question ‘what if Mahariel was really fucked up by that journey?’ He is extraordinarily Blighted - 'it continues killing him even after the Joining’ Blighted, 'makes contact with Urthemiel in his dreams’ Blighted, 'eventually becomes more Shriek than elf’ Blighted.

He spends a lot of time hating the world, and it hates him right back in return. But Ghila never stops fighting for a better future, no matter how much it costs him.

Further reading:

• AO3 collection of all fics Ghila appears in
• Info page (only really works on desktop, sorry)
• Playlist and ship playlist with Morrigan