dgaider:

psdo:

While I wouldn’t recommend checking it out for yourself (because idiots) there is a thread on BSN wherein people are expressing an interest in having Maevaris as a follower/companion or at least for her to show up in DA:I AND BY GOLLY IF THAT ISN’T A THING I ALSO WANT. And so I express my interest in the only way I know how: by giving her a pretty outfit.

Maevaris came into being too far into DAI’s development process to be a party member for that game (ironically, by the time fans know nearly anything about a game the time for “big” suggestions is over). Like I mentioned before, however, I’m not done with her just yet. And that’s as much as I’ll say.

Aside from: that is one kick-ass outfit.

dragonageconfessions:

CONFESSION: I’ve tried to like Isabela, I really have. I just can’t get past the fact that not only did she carry slaves on her ship, but she also threw them overboard to save her own skin. I find this just inexcusable

…did you miss the part where she feels horrendously guilty about this and vows not to let it happen again? Or the part where after she’s tricked into taking on more slaves, she frees them all knowing it will put her in Castillion’s bad graces?

At one point Isabela even says “Our mistakes make us who we are.” The regret in her delivery is palpable. Isabela isn’t perfect, and she’d be the first to admit it. She has big glaring flaws like so many of the characters in this series. Sten murdered an innocent family who saved his life when he saw his sword was gone. Fenris killed the Fog Warriors who saved his life because Danarius ordered it. And before you say, “But he’s a slave,” Isabela was sold to an Antivan trader. In many ways, she was in bondage herself, and much of her behavior can be attributed to her desire for freedom and her refusal to let herself become a captive again.

dragonageconfessions:

Confession: It bugs me when people get mad whenever I say I don’t approve of mages being outside the Circle. It’s not because I’m “pro-oppression”, it’s because I can’t just let go of the format in Origins. In Origins, the circle was like a boarding school and you couldn’t go off campus unless you were an experienced mage out of the harrowing, and there were mages who wanted to be there. In DA2 they made it sound like it was a torture facility. Plus, you know, abominations and blood mages.

Boarding school, really? Did we play the same game? Did you meet the Tranquil? How about Jowan and Anders and the other mages who didn’t want to be there? As for the mages who DID want to be there, one kept going on about how there was something fundamentally wrong with her, how the Maker was punishing her, how she prayed to be fixed. It rang a lot of those adult gay conversion camps that try to tell people there is something fundamentally wrong with the way they were born.

Yes, blood mages and abominations present a threat. So utilize the templars as a police force. But mages are prematurely imprisoned as children, and treated as guilty before they commit any crime. Such an assumption, along with the constant threat of annulment or tranquility, could easily lead the best people towards dark and desperate measures for freedom.

This is something that we see in American prison systems today. They provide an environment which foster criminal behavior rather than reform. The same could be said of the Circle, including the one in DAO which harbored a whole cabal of blood mages operating despite the apparent boarding school air.

We also know Anders faced solitary confinement, one of the most psychologically damaging punishments you can inflict on someone. We hear of beatings and rapes, and we see evidence of the latter in DA2 with the Tranquil Solution. Listen to he ambient dialogue in the Gallows. They didn’t make the Circle sound like it’s a torture chamber, it IS a torture chamber.

And this is who I get when, when I don’t know myself anymore
And this is what I choose when it’s all left up to me [x]