Andaran atish’an

I'm back after hoarding text posts like a little goblin while gathering screenshots from my Origins playthrough

I think Cullen and Sera have a sibling dynamic that no one wants to capitalize on like they're both from poor backgrounds, they both have wariness of mages, they both love themselves some fucking sugar cookies, and Sera loves messing with people with sticks up their asses

and Sera, in her own ways, tries to get Cullen to have fun and also take care of himself. That cake bit was to mess with him SURE but Sera does things in a roundabout way so I 100% believe she noticed Cullen was on running on nothing but pure determination and needed to eat or he was going collapse. Sera is perceptive as hell and while I don't think Cullen would have told her about the lyrium withdrawal, she can put two and two together (and probably overheard things).

And Cullen's issues with Sera really stem from her being a prankster and just kind of full of nonsense, but again, he can look at the reports back from a mission and see there's a method behind the madness

and Cullen HATES nobility so if Sera steals the breeches off of every noble in Skyhold and pins them to the gates like a warlord displaying the bodies of their enemies

Duncan, the regretful 💧 Five of Cups

Had the pleasure of painting this piece and two others for @dragonageannual 2026 zine! It was so much fun working on this and seeing other people's art and writing!

Process under the cut

The point of Merrill's storyline, and Marethari's place in it as a foil and antagonist, is that her pride lead her to alienating herself from the community she was trying to enrich with her work and that Marethari, with her unwillingness to support Merrill, sabotaged her own attempt to keep Merrill safe and set her up as the next keeper of the clan by using her authority to more or less totally ostracize her. After Marethari did that Merrill was never going to be able to stay there and become Sabrae's Keeper anyway. Marethari and Merrill are so alike that their conflict was doomed from the very start. BOTH of them had something that they thought they knew best about, weren't entirely wrong about but weren't entirely right about either, and went about it in the most scorched earth way possible.

That narrative worked perfectly in DA2. It was one of my favorites. Marethari is downright my favorite toxic mother in all of Dragon Age.

The way that narrative was treated survives DAI and only annoys me a little bc I think the primary issue Sabrae had with the Eluvian was that it was blighted and Merrill was summoning a demon. Not the existence of the Eluvian itself. If they'd found a non-blighted one I bet they would have been thrilled to let Merrill play with it. Morrigan was already connected to the Eluvians and the crossroads in Witchhunt so it wasn't as jarring and disrespectful but I personally still would have loved to see some mention of Merrill and her Eluvian after the others had been woken up in The Masked Empire that, I guess, exonerated all of her sacrifices. Hell, I would have even accepted an appearance as an agent of Fen'Harel bc I actually think Solas would have LOVED Merrill and she's probably one of the Dalish most likely to be able to accept a stark 180 turn around on who the Gods are and if we should like them.

I could have accepted her total and complete absence in VG if not for the fact that the fucking Eluvians were apparently SOOO widespread that the Dalish apparently just GAVE ONE, THAT WORKED, to the Grays Wardens. For funsies I guess. Merrill went through all that work to restore ONE. SINGLE. ELUVIAN. And now they're just all over the fucking place. All the mystique totally removed. Rook is incapable of even a second of real wonder at the fact that they're seeing actual working Eluvians. DAI at least continued to treat them like rare and valuable resources with Morrigan being the only one that has any real access or use of them until Trespasser. In VG some random ass fucking Warden Blacksmith (Human, by the way) can apparently set up and repair a broken one. Don't even get me STARTED on how VG trivializes the Blight thereby making Merrill's entire narrative a big ol' Who the fuck cares bc you can walk through Blight puddles and be fine and Eluvians are working and so widespread we can just GIVE THEM AWAY. All that fighting over them in the Masked Empire? Killing Felassan over the Eluvian Network? Who fucking cares? They're just walkin' through a door to Rook. Popping by through my rare and ancient technology to get some milk in Treviso.

And weirdly enough you’re really good at this: making pizzas and dealing with shitty customers and breaking up fights in the parking lot and pretending to be Duncan’s cousin on the phone so the utility company doesn’t cut off the power. But running a store is a lot of work for two dumb kids, so slowly you start accumulating a bunch of competent weirdos to help out, like the nun who left her convent because god told her to help you make pizzas, and the elderly school teacher who just survived a mass shooting, and the guy the papa johns down the street hired to run you over. And really there’s no way any of this should be working as well as it is - you’re absolutely committing fraud of some kind here - but you’ve managed to dodge the landlord every time he’s stopped by, and the health inspector never shows up to tell you to stop letting your dog hang out behind the counter and you’re all still kinda looking at each other and asking ‘are we allowed to just do this?’ before shrugging again and continuing to make pizzas, until somehow, through a series of unlikely technicalities, your doofus coworker ends up on the ballot for governor.