More of the same. Spoilers for the Brecilian Forest, assuming I'm spelling that right.

I think this is my favorite part so far, even though it is kind of all over the place.

( 'Nothing like a brush with death to make you... not like death very much.' )

Next up: Redcliffe.

Next bit. First draft. Because I found it somehow appropriate to salvage the Highever shield during the noble origin and then equip Alistair with it since I was playing a dual-wielder who didn't have the necessary strength requirement anyhow. As before, spoilers for the human noble origin and all of Ostagar.

( wait a little while, give it time to heal )

Yeah, so, remember when I said there would be fanfic? Here's a little bit of it, part of what will hopefully be a larger sequence dealing with some of the particular issues that spring from the human noble origin, and how they dovetail with Alistair's personal damage. It's a draft and needs some work, and I demonstrate at the end why I should not be allowed to wield either foreshadowing or dramatic irony, and aside from that I'm not sure what to call it yet - I'm kind of tempted towards "The Art of Losing Everything," but I know that it only comes to mind as a title because there's already a fanfic titled "The Art of Losing" posted to swooping_is_bad, so that's a no go.

Second draft, reposted now that I've fixed the timing some. It's still sort of fudging, since I think we're meant to suppose that Alistair doesn't hear anything about the PC's backstory until, as with the other companions, they mention it in dialogue - but all such references are glancing at best anyhow, so, pff.

Spoilers for the human noble origin and the main plotline through Ostagar, and bits of Alistair's backstory besides. And, yes, my PC's name makes it into this draft. I prefer to edge around specific details like that as much as I can, but DAO's PC unfortunately doesn't get the last-name-basis treatment that Commander Shepard gets in Mass Effect, so it's harder to work around.

( to the soldier, the civilian, the martyr, the victim - this is war )

As my previous posts suggests, I finished a play through Dragon Age. And had an OMG WAIT THAT WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN reaction to the consequences of one of my decisions.

I can't yet give an overall verdict on the game yet, though. Partly that's because there's still a lot of stuff I haven't tried out yet - four other origins and a bunch of sidequests and different choices and all - and partly because my D: D: D: reaction to the aforementioned spoiler is coloring my opinions and the part of me that reacts to how it works as a story (which is very well, really) is running up against how I intended it to play out in a kind of silly way.

Also, the fact that for some reason the choice that I made was not accounted for in subsequent dialogue - even though it was an unavoidable choice and I didn't have to go out of my way or do anything special to take the option that I did - struck me as a bit sloppy. In a game with so much depth and so many different choices, I could understand if bits were unaccounted for in some sidequest or optional extra bit someplace, but why on earth wouldn't you cover all the bases of the main, plot-critical decisions?

Of course, it's no skin off me to go back through and rearrange my choices a little, but the sudden, unexpected dissonance made me uncomfortable.

ALL OF THAT SAID, it's a great game, and I do not have enough things to say about how much I love how the party interactions. My biggest complaint right now has nothing to do with the ending at all, it's that, having gone all the way through the game with a human noble, when I try starting another origin it feels somehow wrong to play a different character type... my brain has latched onto the character I played first, which is also a problem I had a bit of with Mass Effect, but the wider variation of character backstories and the fact that the Dragon Age PC, unlike Commander Shepard, isn't fully-voiced makes things much worse this time.

I expect I will get over it. At the very least I want to play a male Dalish elf so that I can romance Zevran free from the temptation of Alistair's presence. /shallow.

I will probably write some fanfic. So much of the stuff that would ordinarily be between-the-scenes in a different game is actually played out in Dragon Age, so I don't know how much fic I will write, but the impulse is there all the same. Alistair will probably feature heavily, to no one's surprise.

So I've been sick for the past slightly-more-than-a-week, which has sucked. As a result, about all I have really had the energy to do has been playing Dragon Age Origins.

I truthfully wasn't interested in DAO at all throughout all of the buildup to its release. I was pretty well aware of it because I was keeping tabs on Mass Effect 2's development, but it just didn't ping me at all until I started hearing the comments from people who were actually playing it. Then I had to try it out - and if Mass Effect 2 is anything like this, I'll be very happy.

I'm especially hoping that the party interactions are handled in a similar way; I love the random in-the-field conversations and things like having the other party members comment (usually hilariously) on the romance subplot. It gave me an entirely disproportionate thrill the first time I switched control from my main character to her love interest mid-gameplay and heard him say "My love?" instead of his default response. I'm coming to the conclusion that even though we know the romantic subplot will be less prominent in ME2 than it was in the first game, if they just include such tiny but immersive details I'll be content.

There are definitely some elements that are familiar to me from the other two Bioware RPGs that I have played (KotOR and ME). Handily, they are elements that I enjoyed from those games. It's also very aware of all the usual sword-and-sorcery tropes - playing the human noble origin is a little like playing the first chapter of Mercedes Lackey's By the Sword as a video game - but it gets markedly less predictable and more complicated once the main storyline gets underway. I think I was put off, or at least left somewhat cold by, the aggressively Dark And Edgy marketing, but as sinvraal commented on masseffect, it's not purposelessly dark, and the player has plenty of opportunity to make their character a light in the darkness, something that appeals to me.

I'm also really liking the various moral choices - thus far I've been able to work things out pretty much the way I've wanted, but there have been a few points at which I really worried about it. More than that, there's a feeling of interconnectedness to the different quests, thanks both to the Gondor-calls-for-aid plotline and just the way little details carry over, making them not just checkpoints to be marked off on the way to the endgame. There's a nice, organic flow to it.

No complaints on the characters. The approval system was a little frustrating at first mostly because I just couldn't seem to do anything that Morrigan or Sten approved of, but I've been able to manage a bit better as I go along, and Morrigan - though she'll probably never be among my particular favorites - has mostly stopped annoying me as we've come to understand each other a little better. I mostly really like other party members (aside from Leilana who I somehow missed and Oghren who I'm looking forward to but haven't managed to pick up yet) - Alistair is snarky and adorable, Wynne is badass, Zevran is entertaining, and Sten is intriguing. And the dog! Plus various neat supporting characters, as well. As a bonus, the game passes the Bechdel test - with flying colors, if you're playing a female PC, but even if you're playing male I suspect it still passes thanks to the interaction between supporting characters.

I'm a good ways into the game at this point - I'm beginning to see the endgame looming, and I'm in the odd position of kind of wanting to start over from the beginning, not just to try out a different origin but to make the game last longer.

...being worried for Alistair might also have something to do with it. Possibly.

Someday I will learn not to go looking up information online when I'm in the midst of playing a BioWare RPG. I end up spoiling myself for the big wrenching stuff even when I'm trying not to. You'd think I'd have learned from Mass Effect.

For those not already aware, today and tomorrow are 4th Wall Days on Polychromatic. Which means that the RP characters there are open for comments/conversation/trolling by the entire internets, IC LJs and personal LJs alike.

I've posted this morning with Squall, and I'll probably post tomorrow with Luck from Baccano!, so feel free to pester either of them.

Things I did not quite realize about my preferences re: fiction until tonight:

1) I like characters whose personalities are based almost if not entirely on their single-minded, obsessive, usually silent devotion to another person. (For example, Hagi from Blood+.)

2) I also apparently like it when characters get their arms cut off. Especially if they have to do the cutting-off themselves, because that's badass.

Sadly, Le Chevalier d'Eon is proving to have much less genderfuck than I'd hoped... although "Everyone knew his sister" is still at least a once-an-episode occurrence and the Queen of England's behavior is awfully subtexty, I am just saying. Also, aw, Durand.

...with a couple hitches.

I got my car back this morning! Everything was covered by insurance, including the use of the rental car for two weeks, and it looks as good as new. You can only tell where the work was done by touching the paint, because it feels smoother. They basically ended up repainting the entire back end of the car, in order to match the paint or something like that.

I got to enjoy having my car back for, oh, a few hours before I tried to go out to join some friends for dinner and it would not start.

Turns out the battery was bad. I'd had it checked like a month ago and it was fine, so I'm not sure if the auto shop guys ran it down somehow or what. It was the car's original battery, admittedly. So I got a jumpstart and went and got a new battery and everything seems okay now. But, geez.

Observation:

If Team Cosmos in Dissidia: Final Fantasy were the Justice League, the Warrior of Light would be Superman... and Squall would be Batman.

I'll have more useful comments on Dissidia later, but right now I'm too busy preparing to beat up Ultimecia in Shade Impulse.

Dropping off the face of the earth this weekend until sometime Sunday. Going on vacation to a place with no internets! I will, however, have video games to keep me occupied. See everyone on the flip side; don't burn down the net while I'm gone.

Bioware has put out a video preview of Star Wars: the Old Republic. They make a point of saying it's a "work in progress," but regardless, I'm pretty impressed. Voice acting and cutscenes in an MMO!

My favorite part, admittedly, was "The smuggler is a classy guy."

Notes to self re: polychromatic, because annwyd is right, this month's curses are fantastic.

( cut for spam )

Pet peeve: discovering that a word I've been using doesn't mean what I thought it meant. It makes me unreasonably sad. Especially when I can't think of any other words that mean exactly the same thing.

First "touchstone," now "diffident." Dammit. :C

Edit to add: I have at least figured out that my wrong reading of "diffident" is probably the result of conflating it with "indifferent," but that still doesn't quite mean what I was using "diffident" to mean.

Sarah Rees Brennan, on the subject of writing damaged heroes.

Highlights:

JANE EYRE: And then you decided to disguise yourself as a gypsy woman in order to tell me about our eternal love. 18753th count of lying to me. First count of cross-dressing.
ROCHESTER: And your point is...?
JANE EYRE: Kiss me, you mad bonnet-wearing fool!
READER: ...Bzuh?

And also:

But an important part of That Guy is that That Guy Is Not Right. My hero Nick doesn’t kill puppies or cross-dress, but he’s been raised in a atmosphere of constant violence. He learned to use knives when he was seven, he ditches bodies in the river and then drives home annoyed about being late for dinner. Finding true love isn’t going to fix him. Finding a voucher for five years of free therapy probably isn’t going to fix him. I wanted to show all that, and yet not write a book which made readers go ‘Oh my God, the main character... if only one could reach into the pages of a book and BEAT THE HERO TO DEATH WITH A SPATULA.’

Dream I had tonight:

I went out for a walk in t-rex country. Ignoring all sorts of helpful advice on where t-rexes are most likely to be found and how to avoid running into one, I went scrambling along the steep bank of a lake, and look up, and find myself eye-to-eye with a t-rex that was coming down to the lake to drink.

Since everyone knows from Jurassic Park that t-rexes won't see you if you don't move, I froze. And had to cling to the bank and listen for several minutes while the t-rex and a couple other t-rexes behind it debated as to whether I was a person (and therefore food) or a tree.

Finally I took a risk and jumped down from the bank into the lake and tried to make my escape underwater while still keeping an eye on where the t-rexes were and hoping that they weren't big swimmers. Then one of my cats brushed against my legs and I flailed myself awake.

I don't even know.

More Luck/Eve while I am on a roll. No sex this time.

This will possibly end up as part of Fortune Favors the Brave, because, well.

omg I love them so much

( In which Eve comes unexpectedly to the rescue. )

This flurry of fic inspiration is brought to you mostly courtesy of my finally finding an online translation of the epilogue of Drugs & Dominoes, which has further cemented my love for this pairing forever.

Summed up: after regaining consciousness from his bout of Post Dramatic Stress Disorder, Luck gives Eve the location where they dumped Dallas. But does not actually tell her 'fine go get him,' because that would be too easy. Instead he says 'if you ever feel like his suffering has been enough to make up for my anger, then do what you want, and don't say anything else because whether you thank me or curse me it's just going to make me mad,' and then he goes home and broods about it a lot.

And Eve goes home and frets about how if she rescues Dallas it might hurt Luck.

o-otpppp

Apparently she does eventually turn Dallas into a decent human being, too.

Another Luck/Eve ficlet. Unexpectedly, this one is rated R. For sex, not for violence. Don't look at me like that, guys, I don't even know.

( Eve tilts the glass between her hands, and watches the pale liquid swirl within. )

This is for damnedmage:

( Read more... )

Hopefully I am not Doing It Wrong, but I'm sure someone will let me know.

There is also a picture but that will have to wait until I am home.

Have very ambitiously signed up for a Squall/Rinoa ship_manifesto.

TLDR likely to ensue.

Here's a random little bit of Luck/Eve quickfic written for a fic battle prompt, just because. Probably indirectly atrocity's fault.

( I wonder if you're having second thoughts. )

Stolen from infinitepryde:

Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change. Something tiny (e.g. "and then Fay chose silver glitter instead of gold") or big (e.g. "and then Rose was arrested instead of Jack") and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story.

Since I usually write shortfic which doesn't especially lend itself to this sort of thing, I will expand "story" to include RP and canon. Have at.