Paths We Choose

I can’t believe it

All that obsessive research into medieval dental hygiene actually paid off

I was spending all this time thinking “Literally no one cares about Thedosian dental hygiene, Amy, why are you wasting your time on this” but HERE IT IS

So yeah, this isn’t actually true! While the toothbrush itself is a fairly modern invention, there’s a well recorded history of people in medieval Europe using a combination of various sweet-smelling mouth rinses and scrubbing their teeth clean with a cloth and a mild abrasive herb paste of some sort. Some common rinses included mint and wine or mint and vinegar, and pastes included things like marjoram and mint, rosemary and charcoal, and vinegar, pickling alum, white salt and honey.

Someone even tested a bunch of historical remedies out and found out that they were mostly pretty effective.

its cold and i like tea

I’m pretty fluent now but still! I know what it means to think in one language and to work in another, it’s labour and it’s vulnerable. Especially! If you were/are affected by the prevailing attitude that the English language is far superior to what everyone at home speaks. Especially! With the way English language proficiency is incorrectly linked to capacity and capability.

You aren’t falling short of an ideal, you’re bringing something new to the table. Translation isn't a 1:1 act, it's filtered through generations of culture and context. No matter how fluent I get, I'll always be coming at the English language from a different baseline.

There are priorities that other languages have in description, storytelling and movement that English doesn’t consider. Idioms, metaphors, analogies, ways of describing things that just don’t happen the same in English. There are concepts that are difficult to translate into English that are everyday in other languages, stuff you're not necessarily consciously aware of.

I enjoy your fics specifically BECAUSE of the layers of language and how you’re translating your way through them. I’m a better writer and thinker and reader BECAUSE of it. And the effort and labour of translating the untranslatable, I appreciate it. And after everything, you speak multiple languages?! Awesome. Magnificent.

Do not let the hegemony of the English language and its associated storytelling conventions intimidate you too much. You’re fine. You’re doing great. I cheer you on. I kiss your writing hands.

Now, if English IS your first language...I kiss your eavesdropping eyes.

enough kissing

bye

My Enemy.

i love my wife morrigan. however. this design makes no goddamn sense. “this is our character who has deeply absorbed the lesson to disregard all sense of beauty and frivolity.” HUH? “this is our character who is a practical survivalist who’s lived in the wilds all her life.” HUH? “this is our character who is referred to as looking chasind and who guesses her biological dad is probably chasind and btw the chasind are dark-skinned people who wear their hair in cornrows.” HUH?????

it’s... so bad... the stupid skirt composed entirely of belts can stay because i have a great affection for it but everything else Must Go.

the jewellery and rich red colour and even to some extent the showing of skin—though please please not to that level for, again, a practical survivalist, who is on a tough adventure in combat and gross environments and harsh weather—could make sense for a version of this character. but not for the one we first meet out of the korcari wilds!!! absolutely not!!! she has rejected human society for the time being and she has internalised an extremely harsh lesson about not being allowed to have the beautiful things she likes. no she does not have big chunky solid gold necklaces. maybe a late game morrigan could dress a particular way purely because she likes it. but her starting in this outfit is such a detriment to the storytelling it boggles the mind. she absolutely needs to be in practical clothing for the outdoors, poorly patched together in the absence of any kind of community, with little to no decoration or colour, any small bits of ornamentation personally handmade and/or tucked halfway out of sight. and you can have her branch out later. you know. storytelling.

It’s so unusual and unexpected. You don’t think an NPC would have this kind of agency, especially after you did all the right things and pressed all the right buttons and got into their pants. This is where romance storylines tend to end: they boned, and lived happily ever after.

But… no. Hawke does nothing wrong, as far as we know. The sex was, at the very least, ‘fine’. But Fenris doesn’t want to risk another flashback, or just too upset by the first one, or simply feels this is all too much and too soon, as he says. And he leaves. There’s no discussion. He apologises, he knows this will hurt Hawke, but he’s not letting Hawke talk him into anything. He doesn’t even explain all that much, and frankly he doesn’t need to. Of course he’s free to walk away from a relationship he doesn’t want, or isn’t ready to have. 

And that’s Hawke! Fenris’ first and, at the time, still only friend. The only person Fenris can count on to have his back if the hunters come for him again. (And this scene happens after A Bitter Pill, so hey they just did) By then Fenris is getting closer to Aveline, Varric and Isabela at least, but he probably knows that if they’re forced to pick a side they’ll choose Hawke. So Fenris risks severing all the connections he’s made in Kirkwall, if Hawke is hurt and offended enough to throw away their friendship.

Fenris really thinks that’s a possibility. He’s relieved and happy when Hawke takes him on a mission again, there’s a banter about that. But he still leaves, even if it’s the hardest thing he’s ever done, because that’s what’s right for him at the time. 

I still can’t believe the things I read about da2 before playing - the people who were angry at Fenris for leaving, who moved on to other LIs and even chose to sell Fenris to Danarius as some kind of punishment for breaking their precious Hawkes’ hearts.

Good thing you asked because I've actually thought about it before 😎

I can't imagine a lot of Qunari would find it comfortable to sleep on their side (just about 90% of horn types would get in the way of that) or their backs (unless you lucked out to have fully straight horns like the Iron Bull). So, my favourite interpretation and the one that makes the most sense To Me is that they sleep face down.

Par Vollen would likely have accommodations to make it comfortable, using something similar to the pillows for sleeping face down we have in our modern era. They have this hole you can stick your face into, and I believe those pillows could be further adjusted for an individual's horn type. Or, since DAVG explained to us that horns regrow, maybe the most "tricky" horn types would be regularly trimmed for the user's convenience to make sleeping easier (I also headcanon horns to be kind of like nails where you don't really feel that much when they get cut down, so it'd be a painless procedure).

Qunari outside Par Vollen probably wouldn't have easy access to those pillows, if at all. Also very fun for me to think about Qunari characters growing up away not just from Par Vollen, but any Tal Vashoth or any one familiar with the Qunari way of life and being completely unaware something like that even exists and having to just power through the discomfort because they don't know any alternatives ٩(✿＾◡＾)۶

(thinking mostly about Qunari Rook de Rivas and Mercars here)

Another thing worth considering is the headrests that were historically used instead of pillows in certain cultures. I'm the most familiar with the Japanese culture by way of my degree, so I'm thinkinng about Takamukra/Hakomakura in particular, but afaik similar headrests were used in Egypt as well, and I'm sure other places, too.

The purposes of such pillows was to allow sleeping without disturbing hairstyles that took a long time to put together. I'm not sure how explicitly comfortable those would be, but they would get the job done for the horn types that don't curl down towards the sides of the face (like these).

Something like that!!

[Lately I’ve been thinking about how my Warden, Hawke and Inquisitor would act towards each other and ended up writing out an ask meme. Feel free to ask me these (just pls not all of them at once) or just reblog it idc. I’ve just never seen many questions asked on how the three protagonists would view each other. Or many compare/contrast type questions. I tried to keep these as general as possible]

What would your Warden generally think of your Hawke and your inquisitor?

What would your Hawke generally think of your warden and your Inquisitor? 

What would your Inquisitor generally think of your warden and your Hawke?

What would they think about each other’s love interests (if they romanced someone of course) 

Is your inquisitor jealous that both the warden and Hawke have a mabari hound? 

What would they think of each other’s combat skills/techniques?

Are all your protagonists the same combat class? And what specializations did they take? 

What would your inquisitor and warden think of what happened in Kirkwall? Would they have supported Hawke’s decisions? 

Would your warden or Hawke have actually accepted the role of inquisitor if Cassandra had located them as she’d planned to? Would they have been a good leader for the Inquisition? 

Do your protagonists share the same opinions on the Chantry?

Do your protagonists share the same opinions on mages rights? 

Do your protagonists share the same opinions on blood magic? 

Do your protagonists share the same opinions on The Game?

If they’d been in each other’s places would they have made the same or different choices? And who would they have romanced, if anyone?

Would your protagonists have the same character alignment?  

Would your protagonists have the same Hogwarts house? 

If Origins and Inquisition had the 3 personalities (Diplomatic, Sarcastic, Aggressive) which would your warden and inquisitor have predominately been? And what one did your Hawke have? 

What is the biggest similarity between your protagonists?

What is the biggest difference between your protagonists? 

Who handles responsibility the best? And who handles it the worst? 

Do they share any of the same hobbies? 

Would you ever ship any of them together? 

How old were each of your protagonists at the start of their respective games? Do you think their age affected the choices they made? Looking back would they have done any major action differently?

How do each of your protagonists handle loss? 

What is/was their relationship with their family like? 

Do any of your protagonists marry and/or have children? 

What would their fears on the graves in the fade during Here Lies The Abyss be? 

What is their favourite location within their own game and what would be their favourite in each others?

How do they each feel about the Deep Roads?