Hi there, the name's Kez. I'm a 20-something year old Welsh girl with far too much time on her hands and far too much love for programmes that were actually created for kids.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Companions’ reactions to the Chantry explosion
Hawke:
Aveline:
Isabela:
Merril:
Varric:
Fenris:
Sebastian:
Anders:
***********
JFC I WAS NOT EXPECTING THE LAST ONE
*WHEEZES WITH LAUGHTER*
#scream
CAN YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES
JUST STOP
YOU DONT LOVE THEM BECAUSE THEY’RE DWARVES
YOU ONLY LOVE THEM BECAUSE THEY LOOK LIKE TEEN HEARTHROBS
THATS THE ONLY REASON
I HATE ALL OF YOU
BECAUSE YOU ARE ALL THE REASON THEY MADE THESE FUCKING DWARVES LOOK LIKE HUMANS
I AM SO FUCKING PISSED THAT THEY DONT LOOK LIKE DWARVES
JUST BECAUSE SOME MASS OF WOMEN ON THE INTERNET CAN WET THEIR PANTS
AND TAUNT ME BY REPEATEDLY POSTING IMAGES OF ONLY THESE THREE DWARVES
ONLY THESE THREE!!!
IT WOULDN”T BE SO BAD IF IT WERE LIKE
hey the dwarves were all cool but i like the ones i can relate to the most, which are the human looking ones
NO
IT IS THE HUMAN LOOKING ONES ONLY
EVER
YOU PRICKS
YOU MASS OF PRICKS
RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHH
(Source: braidstache)
dammit teagan you’re doing it again
can’t you at least try to pretend i’m your king when we’re in public
varric: don’t worry, daisy. the chantry keeps a lot of water on hand.
Nggh I love the unity of the design of the Kirkwall-related seals! They’re all distinct enough to be interesting and work well alone, but they all use the same forms and symbolic “language”, so to speak, to create a strong visual identity when considered together. Like any well designed thing, they’re not just decorative and the elements they’re comprised of aren’t purely ornamental. Whoever did these was really goddamn thoughtful and deliberate about it. And, uh, guys, I hope you don’t mind me dropping a shitload of gushing down on you because I’m going to gush like a geyser for the rest of this post.
Pretty much every one of them is a good example, but I think it’s clearest to see how brilliant these things are by considering the City of Chains symbol. For those who don’t know DA2 that well, it’s a bit of graffiti that becomes ubiquitous by the third act when unrest in Kirkwall reaches the boiling point. It’s also something I’ve always looked at and wondered “what”. What does it mean, exactly? Who does it represent, which faction? Who the fuck is painting them everywhere? None of those things are every satisfactorily explained, or really explained at all. It’s just there. When viewed in isolation, it just looks like an angry, dragony, obscure graffiti tag. I didn’t even know it was called “The City of Chains” before I saw this post. But when you see it beside all the heraldry of Kirkwall, suddenly everything makes sense. It doesn’t represent a single faction or person, it represents a major turning point in a city’s history.
Formally, it seems like a corruption of the Slavers symbol, yet is visually closest to the symbol of the Guard and the Alienage sign. This is cool because it reflects the origins of the city, in slavery and blood, while recognizing the ongoing injustices of the treatment of its people and the ineffectiveness (hypocrisy?) of those who are meant to protect the city. However, the most interesting part of it is not what it resembles, but what it deliberately doesn’t resemble. The bit that draws me is the bent central line that bisects the symbol. All of the Kirkwall symbols share that linear central element, usually as a line of symmetry. There but there is no symmetry in the City of Chains symbol, no balance or equality. But more importantly, on a good number of the city’s symbols that central line deliberately resembles a sword.
ISN’T THAT COOL?
…no, listen, it is. Listen to how cool it is.A sword is a marvelously powerful and malleable symbol. It’s an instrument of power and a promise of violence. It’s symbol of strength for the Templars, one of order for the guards, oppression for mages and terror for elves and the other downtrodden. For the Templars, the Guard, the slavers and the merc groups, the sword is a way of life. For everyone else, it’s a fact of it. Even the Healer’s symbol has a sword, well hidden. That actually might be my favorite use of the sword motif, because the sign is designed to recall the Caduceus and to give the impression of being simultaneously holy (parts of it resemble an angel’s wings, its lines are pure and bright) and profane (the intersecting angles resemble an alchemical sigil, a sign of magic and unholy workings). Thing is, the Caduceus is a snakeity staff, not a sword. Although a staff can be used as a weapon, a sword more pointedly reminds you that those who know how to heal also know how to harm. Plot wise, that’s significant too; one of the people who does the most physical damage to the city is a healer. Yet in the City of Chains symbol, that central, sword-like element is not straight like the other instances of the motif. It’s jagged, crooked. Warped. The idea of the sword is no longer functional. The sword has failed Kirkwall, and stained its walls the color of blood. Which, you know, explains the fact that the symbol is always painted in red.
And the symbol looks like a dragon because, fuck, dragons or cool or something. Or maybe it’s a dragon because that’s the defining symbol of the goddamn Dragon Age, whatever. I’m not a professor of symbology here I ain’t have to know everything.
Anyway, all of this you get from a single goddamn symbol that could be completed in six strokes. The best part of it is that despite it’s compressed meaning, the entire symbol is still pretty simple and can be quickly and easily painted anywhere, it can be remembered and disseminated quickly. Anybody with paint and a sense of disregard, or perhaps active contempt, for the law can change the face of a wall by just throwing this up there. It’s a small defiance, one way a person can reclaim a piece of his/her city while protesting the state it has come to.
NEAT, HUH?
(I also super like the qunari one, but for kind of the opposite reason I like the City of Chains symbol. Anyway, I’ve talked enough about shit as it is)
reblogging for poupon’s commentary/deconstruction/analysis. if i could drink every drop of your gushing i would because your words are excellent.
Forgive my comments here, but I will always love the qunari, and I forever thank my past self for having the sodding balls to cosplay the female qunari. Number one, it was a real confidence booster, and two, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have met awesome people such as Elenilote .They are sexy as hell, and for those two days, I felt like the fiercest creature alive. Best feeling ever.
Someone requested Isabela a while back, and I also got one for Batman, so this happened.
She was the Siren, and she left a calling card—black, with a skull and crossbones, very old school.
If she’d been less generous, she could have taken strings of pearls and replaced them with the black spot. But she was no murderer, just a magpie, who deserved pretty things that were all stolen at the start—only she was honest about the stealing part of the equation.
Then, the city was hers, racing lighter than a cat along the Hightown rooftops, the salt air and the quick breeze almost enough to make her feel as though she was a sail unfurling, a knot untying itself, without anchor, without end.
It wasn’t about flying, not at all. It was about being as free as a shadow at night—because there were no shadows at night, or because there were only shadows.
‘When the Kirkwall City Siren comes to call,’ Commissioner Vallen would say, hard of jaw but not always of heart, both hands braced against the desk in her office, ‘we will be ready for her.’
‘Nobody’s ready for me,’ Isabela would reply, fading back into the shadows that held her as close as she held her shiny little treasures.
On nights when the Champion patrolled the streets, it was a different story. She watched with Lyrium Ghost as their caped crusader met with the city’s latest threat—not trying to be a hero at all, but trying to be a martyr.
‘The feathers on the costume are a bit much, though,’ Isabela said. She wasn’t the cat—Lyrium Ghost was, a twitch of his fingers like the flick of a tail. ‘What is this city coming to?’
‘Thieves and scoundrels to be found around every corner,’ Lyrium Ghost replied, his voice as dry as his humor.
‘Well, I’d love to stay and chat—’ Isabela adjusted her goggles, spotted her next grip, and braced herself against solid ground. Every jump lean and impossible as a shadow itself. ‘—but I’ve a Champion to bother.’
(Source: theirins)
this took way longer than it should have *__*
Hawke’s estate didn’t rock and sway—not unless Sandal was in the cellar, apparently, or Fenris practicing his reading in the study, throwing books around, scowling at the statues that came by way of the Imperium. Isabela had already tucked the little ones she could into her bodice and decorated her lodgings down at the Hanged Man with them—but in the end, it just made her think of other places, which was what the inn over a taproom was meant for, anyway.
Always on the move. Really, Isabela had no idea how Hawke could stand it, in a great big house with so many walls and such deep foundations.
Because they knew what it meant to be wanderers. Because the wind in their hair when they stayed in one place just…never felt the same. Because the worst storms drove other people inside, hanging about in doorways, looking to get dry, but a rare sort of person stood under the downpour and laughed up at the weeping sky.
Sooner or later, it smiled back. A wink of sunlight peeped through the clouds, and then they parted as quickly as the skirts on an errant apostate.
Yet Isabela’s feet were still bare, the firelight warm at her back. The smells on the pillows were familiar, too, and she didn’t even have the urge to slice off the bits of gold thread in the brocade.
The house didn’t shake, but the windows rattled with distant thunder. And it was beautiful—even through a pane of glass.
‘I thought you’d have left already,’ Hawke said, leaning against the door’s frame. ‘I know how much you like storms—and what comes after.’
‘Well,’ Isabela replied, ‘sometimes it is nice to watch, wouldn’t you say?’
More Qunari shots, taken by my lovely bby Malik~~~
On the Saturday, I was plain grey. But Sunday, Mal and I made the decision to do the war paint. Yes, I know female-Qunari are not part of the army, but we ran out of grey paint I wanted to try out the red, and I really like it - I got recognised as a Qunari as well, so bonus~???
I keep having mini cac attacks because Expo is only a week away holy shite.
In related news, for anyone interested, there will be a Dragon Age meet on the Saturday at 1pm, probably dockside but mainly anywhere that is free. If anyone wants to come along for photos or to meet me just don’t scare me by being all I follow youuuu and actually specify you mean tumblr OKAY? just send me a message and I’ll keep you up to date with what’s occurring with the meet =]
Our level artists are very strange people. Did you know there’s a cheese wheel hidden somewhere in every level of DA2? Some of them cannot be seen by a player, but trust me— they’re there.
david gaider in a forum q&a, thus ensuring a fandom-wide chase known as the great cheese hunt… (via spicyshimmy)
Also from the Dragon Age II Collector’s Edition guide.
The only concept art and reference, beside the actual game model itself, that I’ve ever seen of Bianca. Edited out the text from this page so it’s a bit cleaner.
i never thought i’d be saying this, but…i think that crossbow is trying to seduce me.
