The next (and hopefully last) rework of the tarot card for my Hawke. Markus Hawke is a humorous Rogue with a rather bitter progression. Some of his milestones include: Carver and Bethany died, no one romanced, sided with Templars, Anders executed, Viscount of Kirkwall.
I imagine Hawke to rule as Viscount in solitude and, because he has got no one left to make a stand against the growing Lyrium corruption within Kirkwall, he leaves the city to its fate by responding to Varric’s call for help. He then finds purpose (and love) with the Inquisition. He needed a break from saving people’s asses anyway…
Another reason making the Northern Water Tribe misogynistic was an interesting choice to say the very least is like,
Okay so neither men or women are considered inherently superior or inferior in Inupiaq culture but if either of them is gonna be considered to be a bit on the dumb or wimpy side, it’s probably gonna be the men. Especially the younger ones.
Like if you had to give up a kid for adoption, you were gonna want to give up a girl. Because boys were more likely to do something that could get themselves killed, even when told not to. So you were gonna want some back up sons. And boys always complained about being hungry more, when girls could supposedly handle just smelling food and be strong enough to wait. And of course, a man who had reached marrying age had to be judged fit to be a husband, but a woman who knew all her domestic skills could just up and leave for the next village to find a suitable husband (or five) and no one would stop her. The ideal wife was not someone who always agreed that her husband knew best, but someone he could look at and be filled with pride that a woman so clever and capable chose to live with him.
Women would sit through their arms being tattooed, knuckle to shoulder, without modern technology, ignoring the pain because the lines on their bodies were pretty to them. That was considered feminine.
So again, kinda weird how such a culture irl can inspire people to write a fantasy one that treats women and women’s work so dismissively.
A dating service where matching is based on people’s search history exists. You’re a serial killer. You go on a date with a writer.
Serial Killer: metaphorically, if you were to kill someone, how would you do it?
Writer: Air shot between the toes, it’ll look like a heart attack.
Serial Killer who is obviously in love already: *sucks in a breath* ok
Writer: how long would it take to die if you were to potentially stab someone in the guts
Serial killer: anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes
Writer, already bringing a ring out: *shaking* thanks
A++ addition
Writer: *shows the serial killer the murder scene they’re writing* babe, i’m not sure if this would actually work?
Serial killer: *kisses writer on the forehead and leaves, comes back later, a suspicious scent of blood coming off them* it works baby, you’re doing great
I LOVE THIS
Oh no, murder comedy is my jam
I love this, I love all of this, but quick question, does the author know? Like are they aware that their significant other is a serial killer or do they just think that they have a morbid sense of humor? It’d be even funnier if the author had no fucking clue, like how Aurthur Conan Doyle was apparently stupidly gullible, and on top of it they’re a horror or crime novelist. Like the serial killer works at a butcher shop or something so it’s completely normal for them to come home smelling like blood, no murders going on here, no sirey. Just my darling coming back home from a long day at work.
Now fast forward a bit and the author has managed to get their first book published, with loving support from the serial killer who helped them fine tune all the murder scenes, and it’s a big hit. Enough so that a detective with the local police department has noticed some disturbing similarities to several active cases, including details that were never released to the press. Obviously he brings this up to his superior and convinces him that there’s something to the theory, but it’s all circumstantial right now. He stakes out the author’s home and is super convinced that the author is the murderer, but they don’t seem to do anything??? Like they literally are at the house all day, that’s it. Most they do is leave for groceries.
So you get this dynamic of the serial killer mining the author for creative murder schemes, the author being lovingly encouraged by the serial killer, and finally the detective who is just so sure that the author is the killer and that if he sticks it out long enough he’ll FINALLY have proof.
Plot twist, The serial killer and detective use to go out so it gets sub what personal.
“You need to stop seeing them. I think they are a serial killer.”
Serial killer breaths in. “Look-”
…perfect
I don’t like actual murder mysteries, but this is perfect
This is a non-exhaustive list of some common ‘quirks’ or habits that can give away a character’s military experience. Wrote it up for myself and it’s particularly useful when I want to show instead of tell. These are based on first person accounts from several vets! Thought others might like to use it too for a reference :D Ones with * or ** came up particularly often.
Like any guide, it’s just that - a guide, not a set of rules! A character is unlikely to do all of these, and other factors like ADHD, trauma, or just personality might effect what sticks. People are endlessly diverse!
Eat, Drink, Dress, and Rest
*High tolerance for physical discomfort
** Eat very fast, and aren’t picky about the taste
**Cansleep anywhere - on a helicopter, in enemy territory, up high, underground, when it’s loud, when it’s quiet
* Can operate effectively without sleep for over 24hrs, or with erratic and limited sleep for days
** Wake up early, 0500-0700; Wake up quickly and ready for action
* Hair cut regularly. Beards stay clean shaven (alternatively some may avoid shaving when out of uniform)
** Dress practically and neatly, jackets buttoned/zipped up, ironed, polished
Take hat off indoors
Organization and Talents
Gearhead
Gun nut
Detail oriented
**Pockets are meticulous. The same thing always goes into the same pocket, for easy reach. Pockets never full to bulging. Carry multitool.
** Hands stay out of pockets - ready. (Hands in pockets is forbidden in the military. Some Special Forces may keep their hands in pockets, as their ‘grooming’ rules are less enforced. Because they can)
Alwayscarry things with left hand (and ”southpaws” must learn to use standard right-handed weapons)
** Know how to clean house and keep it organized (may choose not to out of uniform)
** Can make bed and shower fast
Organize clothes to be able to dress and maneuver their own space in pitch black (Navy specifically)
Know how to sew basic repairs (i.e. a button)
Layout items before packing. Tight roll clothes. Pack efficiently
**Canread maps effectively, may prefer them to a GPS, use landmarks
Deadlines not always considered concrete (There is a military mantra, “Hurry up and wait.” Often one would be told to complete something or arrive somewhere at a certain time, but nothing would happen due to someone else’s task meant to be finished earlier still being incomplete)
** Alternatively (or in tandem), arrive 5-30 minutes early to every event
Things kept packed securely in the car, “ready for sea” and “heavy rolls” (Navy specifically)
Routines and Social
** Respect for the “Other” or “Them” - other religions, cultures, races, and ethnicities - had to work crammed together with a diverse group that may have strongly opposing viewpoints, and learn to trust each other to have their backs in dangerous situations (For many, military is their first real experience with different cultures and beliefs)
*Respect≠Like.Will go above and beyond for a respected leader, even if they are disliked
Deeply suspicious of red tape, bureaucracy, and bosses on power trips, and will only do the minimum required for these
** Low tolerance for slacking/job skirting
* Volunteer other people for tasks, and willing to be volunteered for things
Don’t ask people to do things they aren’t willing to do themselves
Stillfollow orders of bosses they dislike. Still have the backs of coworkers they dislike
** Like clear orders, responsibilities, chain of command, and penalties
* Have Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C
Actions matter morethan ceremony; definite respect for processions, but excessive reverence for the flag/anthem/etc viewed as posturing rather than true patriotism
High tolerance for boredom
** Adaptable, high stress tolerance, work efficiently, self reliant
** Avoid having their back to an opening (windows/doors/etc) or sitting anywhere someone can sneak up on them from
*Avoid loud, crowded areas, check perimeters, barricade doors, sleep last in a group (may coincide with PTSD)
Always walk on the right side of a road/grocery aisle/etc
Stand at parade rest, walk cadence, walk fast
* Walk quietly, even in boots, sneak quickly (military crouch run)
De-escalation in violence - in protective armed situations the standard is: 1) multiple warnings, 2) warning shots, 3) shoot to incapacitate. Shoot to kill is a last resort. (not following these steps could get an ally or potential ally killed) In verbal disagreement, resolve an issue before it escalates
* Wariness toward and tendency to feel Other’ed by civilians
* Immediate acceptance toward other military, expectation of shared values
Vernacular
Observe before speaking in a situation, only speak if it seems significantly important to
Refer to people as “Sir” or “Ma’am”
** Speak directly, makedirect eye contact (sometimes comes off as rude, often intimidates)
* Don’t take criticism or disagreement personally, expect others not to, either, and will point out flaws even to superiors (but again, orders are respected)
** Clear communication, acknowledge messages by replying, even if that’s just a thumbs up or down
** Swearing. Lots of swearing. Every other word is swearing
** Dark sense of humor, andracist/sexist jokes -not indicative of individual’s actual belief system or violent tendencies
Unbothered by angry yelling, angry quiet people are more concerning
** Point with ‘knife hands’, not just a single finger
** Use a 24 hour clock instead of a 12 am/pm; i.e. 0800 hours, not 8am (Called ”Military Time” in the US)
Describe locations by o’clock directions, i.e. dog standing at 6 o’clock
* Write out dates as day-month-year (US usually does month-day-year) i.e. 21Oct57
**Usephonetic alphabet to spell things out, or at least have it memorized
** Habitually use military terms orsayings, including:
Good to go - Mission ready, ready to proceed
Squared away - Compliment indicating exemplary service
Popping a smoke - Need to get out of here [From using smoke grenades to call helicopters for extraction]
it’s been two years, but i think that an icon like her deserves to be known about by more people.
her name was freddie oversteegen and she, at the age of fourteen, along with her older sister truus who was 16 and their friend johanna “hannie” schaft who was 19, was a part of the netherlands most famous all female resistance cell which was dedicated to fighting the nazis and dutch traitors.
among other things, they are known to have blown up bridges and railroads, smuggled jewish children from concentration camps and, as the tweet mentions, seducing nazis and then shooting them with guns that they had hidden in their bike baskets. freddie is quoted as having said that they “had to do it.” and that it was a “necessary evil, killing those who betrayed good people.”
though freddie and her sister truus were both lucky and survived the war, hannie schaft wasn’t. at the age of 24, hannie was caught and around three weeks later was executed by nazis, only 18 days before the netherlands were eventually liberated. she was shot with one only wounding her, and, before the final shot, hannie is quoted as having told the executioners: ik schiet beter, which translates to“i shoot better.”
though she didn’t survive, hannie is recognized as a national icon and a face of the dutch resistance, with her story even being retold in a movie from 1981 called “the girl with the red hair.” along with this, truus also founded the national hannie schaft foundation in 1992, on which freddie served as a board member.
freddie, at the time of her death, was 92 years old and the last surviving member of the resistance cell, with truus having died two years earlier at the age of 92.
though these women and all that they did played an important part in the dutch resistance, they are often overlooked in history outside of the netherlands. it’s important that they are remembered and that their work to save people isn’t forgotten. it’s incredible what they did, especially given how young they were, and they deserve more recognition than what they’ve gotten.
BioWare and EA are not two different companies. They aren’t even two different groups. BioWare was established in 1995. It was sold in 2005, NOT to EA, but to some weird investor group which included Bono from U2 (I can’t make this shit up.) Then in 2007 it was sold to EA. That means BioWare has been part of EA for 14 years, longer than it was an independent studio. And independent studio, btw, that produced the hellaracist Jade Empire, so they were hardly free of sin BEFOREEA wrote that fat check, which they were perfectly willing to cash.
I can tell you from personal experience that EA wanted to give them everything they wanted and needed to succeed. (I started working for EA about two months after DAO was released) BioWare was absolutely the EA golden child. I promise you, people in upper management at BioWare were in on the decision to develop Anthem.
The truth is, the phone call is coming from inside the house. Y'all love to blame EA, but BioWare IS EA. Same company, same management, same people. They were your corporate overlords all along.
@kispesan I’m sure a lot of the people at EA now don’t really know how BioWare could do absolutely no wrong in EA’s eyes. They got sooooo much leeway it drove me nuts. (I worked in recruiting and we did a lot of scheduling - with BioWare it was always 10 times harder.) I don’t blame people for not knowing that stuff, but I’m frustrated that EA has owned BioWare for well over a decade and people still think of the BioWare employees as some kind of scrappy band of indie developers who are being bullied by Big Gaming.
@bunabi but BioWare-chan is such a good boi, uwu!!
**
Also, because I’m still bothered by the total lack of critical thinking done by BioWare stans: there’s almost no chance you’d HAVE the DA franchise if EA hadn’t bought BioWare. People are so convinced that EA is the devil that destroys studios, but they totally forget, or maybe have never thought about the fact that studios rise and fall ALL THE TIME. Keeping a game company going is hard work that takes a lot of specialized skills and equipment, particularly console games. (Devkits anyone?) Studios fail, sometimes spectacularly, but BioWare has held on for 26 years now. Why? Because they’ve had big influxes of cash from being purchased and supported by EA.
I distinctly remember the day ME3 came out and people lost their minds over how much they hated it. I was working at EA then and Dear God it was bad. The only day I remember that much hubub was the cursed launch of the Sim City reboot. *Makes sign of the cross to ward off evil* I don’t know if an independent studio could have weathered that, OR put out an updated ending after the initial publication.
And then of course there’s a little project that most DA/ME fans don’t seem to ever think about: SWTOR.
Sit down loves and let Auntie Anansi tell you the tale of the most expensive video game in the world.
Star Wars: The Old Republic is BioWare’s MMORPG and it took 6 years to develop, and at the time of launch was estimated to be the single most expensive game ever made, with a total cost of over 200 million dollars. It came out to HUGE acclaim, huge buzz, that shit was WILD. We had fucking stormtroopers walking around campus on launch day. Cupcakes with little Yodas. People wore cosplay. It was a BIG deal.
And then in under a year it was bleeding players so fast it was hemorrhaging. Why? Because it had taken BioWare six years to make a game with content that even a casual MMO player could finish in a few months, and basically zero endgame. The ultimate MMO with the ultimate franchise and a HUGE fanbase waiting for the game flopped, and it flopped hard. (Relatively speaking, of course. In reality it’s more complicated… But not that much more, honestly.)
I personally doubt anything could have saved BioWare at that point EXCEPT for those fat EA checks.
As for Dragon Age? It began development and was published while BioWare was working on a game that required 800 employees and $200 million dollars to create - you really think that BioWare would have been able to make anything but SWTOR at that time without being acquired by EA?
I get loving BioWare games, and feeling fondly toward the developers, but this tendency the fandom has to personify BioWare and treat it like their precious baby uwu is just too much. Especially when they obviously are kind of sketchy on the history of BioWare to begin with.
Anyway all this is not to say that EA is GOOD. Far from it! What I’m saying is that BioWare stans need to stop giving BioWare a get out of jail free card by blaming EA for hurting their devs and giving you shitty games. I know you want to think that you don’t suck at the corporate teet of EA or whatever, but the fact is you do, and you have since you picked up your first Dragon Age game.
I honestly don’t think people really know or understand how culpable BioWare is with regards to some of the things they claim EA is responsible for.
Like one thing I see every now and then is that EA forced BioWare to use the Frostbite engine, which is widely lauded as being the main source of difficulty that plagued DA:I and ME:A (and I think Anthem’s) production. Frostbite wasn’t designed for RPGs; it was designed for FPS games like Battlefield. Meaning a lot of the functions to keep track of companions on the field, player inventory, and being able to animate something like, uh, the characters wasn’t apart of the development kit. Which resulted in Bioware’s coders having to literally design the tools they needed to make the game while they were literally trying to make the game.
So when you read about this, you can’t possibly consider that it was BioWare that wanted to use Frostbite; they must’ve been forced to use it because of EA. But no, it was actually BioWare. And as a result of this switch, they ended up cutting the exhalted march DLC for DA2.
More recently, folks have been celebrating the fact that DA4 won’t have ~live services~ (ie multiplayer with micro transactions) because they think that MP took away valuable resources from the single player campaign in DAI and MEA, which is just a straight up myth because that’s not how budgeting works when it comes to video game production. The only situation in which it would affect the SP experience is if it was added well into production, which isn’t at all the case with DA:I because not only did Mark Darrah literally admit that they were interested in making DA:I a multiplayer game, DA:I actually started out as a multiplayer game.
That isn’t to say EA didn’t have a hand in wanting MP live services, but the fact that Darrah admitted all this in addition to how EA has no problem with DA4 being exclusively a single player campaign (which probably has more to do with all devs working from home right now due to the pandemic and not the fact that live services is a dealbreaker for gamers) it honestly doesn’t sound like EA at all has a hand in regulating BioWare in any way outside of where their money goes into production.
Really a lot of the issues that plague Bioware seem to stem from poor management (i.e. how ME:A was really worked on in the last 18 months of production because the higher ups were so preoccupied with “high concept” game designs) and the choice to work with an engine that wasn’t designed for RPGs.
Perhaps that’s too broad of a statement, considering I haven’t kept up closely with EA outside of all of this. But in the last couple years it honestly seems like the source of all Bioware’s problems is actually Bioware. I mean, they had “stess casualties” while working on ME:A and Anthem, and one person admitted they would lock themselves in an empty office just to cry.
This kind of stuff honestly makes it difficult to support them. Like, besides how the workers are treated, as a consumer I do not want to preorder any of their games because the last 2 launches were riddled with issues. I seriously hope that management has gotten their shit together or that working from home has been a reprieve from the toxic work environment.
