#rosamunde

André Rieu & Heino performing 'Rosamunde' live in his hometown Maastricht, Netherlands

CW: Mentions of IRL parent death.

Dragon Age Origins was the thing that I sank into during 2020 while the world was much slower for all of us. While there were terrible things happening in the world and in my own life, the fact that I was able to simply just be for a lot of the time was cathartic to me on an imaginative and creative level. The Alistair/Morrigan fic I wrote during that time remains one of my favorite fics I have ever completed and one of the only chapter fics I've ever completed. I also wrote several other one-shots for the fandom.

I was really into Dragon Age 2 as well, but then my mother took a turn for the worse, and my headspace constricted to a point that I didn't have much time or emotional energy for playing anymore. And, on a lighter note, I found the rivalry prospects in DA2 a little more intimidating, though I even made myself a little guide to deal with it on Google Sheets, back during the time I didn't have a job to take all of my problem-solving energy and then some.

Knowing that Veilguard was coming (though I still wish it had been called Dread Wolf, lol, but what even is theming, BioWare), I wanted to get back into Dragon Age. I knew it had been such a long time that if I wanted a sense of my world state that I needed to play DAO again.

One thing I think I might like a little more about Dragon Age 2 as opposed to DAO is that Hawke is a little bit more solid as a character. While you choose a "voice" for your character in DAO, it has very limited use cases, and a lot of the time the voice choices are really just a matter of choosing the least cringe option. For example, I end up choosing the aggressive voice for the Female Cousland character that is to be Rosamunde for me, but the actual lines almost never fit her. I just pick that voice because it's the least objectionable to me. Hawke, on the other hand, follows the BioWare logic of red/purple/blue personality and class where they're different flavors of a basic character you can choose.

I really struggle with whole-cloth OC generation. I'm very attached to the other characters, but I kept floundering a little bit with my Warden, especially when I tried to write her. One of the best things I can do when writing is to capture a character's voice, and it's really hard to do when I am tasked with imagining around the limited voicing and dialogue options provided by DAO for the Warden, as a product of its time.

I had a vague idea of who and what my Warden was four years ago, but having played her again and with a bit more perspective, I think I have a slightly better grasp of her now. I think grounding her to certain touch stones in other media has helped without completely attaching her to a reinterpretation of an extant fictional character.

Way back then, I fancasted her as Adelaide Kane, but I haven't ever watched the period piece or anything much the actress has been in. It was more just a visual vibe upon which to base her.

I can't remember if I found the actress before or after I made my original Rosamunde model in the game.

The above is what she looked like back in the DLC the first time I played.

Now, I've come full circle and am back to beginning of playing awakening, and here's a screenshot of what she looks like now:

She feels much more organic now. Fits the game better.

As I was playing this time, I tried to imagine, at times, how I would intone or rewrite the dialogue choices to fit how I view her as a character.

This time around, I found myself thinking about Rose Tyler, particularly if she'd grown up to be a noblewoman as she fantasized about. It was never on purpose, but I really just needed somewhere to ground my thinking in how she might think about things, and I think there's... some thread there that I am pulling on as I try to help myself feel like my Warden is even half as developed as some of the rest of you guys can make yours.

I'm not quite sure what the vibe is that I'm picking up on here after all this time. I guess it's just a combination of:

A sense of justice while also being willing to be a bit ruthless. Good not being nice always.

Two birds one stone lmao 👉👈

Alice in wonderland

The Hague Philharmonic - Unvollendete / Rosamunde

Fontana

Nothing about TST suggests that Mary was redeemed in any way. 

We learned that she and her team did whatever they were hired to do by whomever would pay them the most (aka: killing for money, as we’ve been saying all along). There were no principles here, no queen-and-country, no just or righteous causes. Just money. 

We learned that she wouldn’t let John name their child - which she specifically said she was going to do in HLV when John miraculously took her back - and instead named the child after herself. Arrogant much?? 

We have this inconsistency of her “wanting a normal life” and yet jumping out the door at every opportunity to do anything other than carry on said normal life. 

Plus she’s really, really bad at making believable excuses.  

Her excuse for having left Ajay to his fate of six years of torture is that she thought he was dead. She’s an assassin. One major part of the job is to confirm the kill. She really, really could have made sure before she went, “meh, I’m out of here, fools”. 

Her excuse for having shot Sherlock was so that she wouldn’t have to tell her husband who she really was, no matter what said shooting cost him, and in spite of the fact that Sherlock was the best man at her wedding, and in spite of the fact that Sherlock had just offered to help her. Totally weak, to the point of being fully unbelievable.

Her excuse for having drugged Sherlock and ditching her husband and infant was that she didn’t want John and Sherlock “hanging off her gun arm”, aka slowing her down. When the reality was that they were far ahead of her. Sherlock and John are very, very good. This excuse doesn’t fly at all. Plus Sherlock had just offered help, again. Plus his brother runs the government and possibly the world and has fingers in every intelligence agency around. Plus if you’re retired from the business, that’s not what you do. Nope. 

Her excuse for ditching on John and the baby AGAIN to go to the aquarium first was that the case was at least partly about her. Selfish much? Doing so denied Sherlock the protection of his partner and the person who reminds him when he’s breaching social etiquette too much. If John had gone first, everything would have turned out quite differently, but no, Mary just had to go.