I Was Talking To My Mom And I Told Her That I Think I Might Have Autism And She Told Me That I Do, And

Okay I need to talk about Dragon Age.

Specifically, I need to talk about Cailan and Loghain.

So Cailan is presented to us as, well, a glory-seeking dumbass who refuses to listen to the advice of those around him. And that's how he's seen and treated by fans. I'm going to say that's wrong, but I do think it's incomplete.

There's some crucial information that we're given at Ostagar that tends to be overlooked. Ostagar is the fourth battle against the darkspawn. So Cailan has already fought three battles against them by the time we meet him. And nothing in those battles suggested any actual intent or tactics from the darkspawn. No signs of organization. Nothing to suggest an archdemon.

So to me, it does make sense that Cailan isn't taking the idea of a Blight too seriously at this point. All he has to suggest a Blight is Duncan's word. And Grey Wardens have been shown repeatedly to be secretive almost to the point of self sabotage. No one outside of the Wardens knows how they are connected to the darkspawn and can literally hear the archdemon.

We also see that Cailan's other advisors are telling him that it isn't a Blight. There's also the fact that the Wardens were banished from Fereldan for years for revolting against the king. It's only relatively recently that they've been allowed back.

So, while yeah, Cailan's kind of a dumbass, it makes perfect sense that he isn't buying into the idea of a Blight. If you remember that he is operating without the information the audience likely has at this point, he doesn't really have a reason to think it's anything more than an unusually large hoard. And he is taking the perceived threat seriously. He has only seen evidence of a large hoard, and he is responding appropriately to the threat of a large hoard.

It was not his fault that the Wardens won't tell anyone anything.

Now, onto Loghain. First off, fuck this guy. I hate this character so much. He's so fucking boring and I couldn't stand it.

With that out of the way, he fully and intentionally betrayed Cailan at Ostagar.

I will agree that retreating was the most tactical choice and that sending in his troops would not have swung the battle. It would have just been even more slaughter.

But I don't think that's why he retreated. He retreated to ensure that Cailan would die, and that he would be the one who got to control the narrative of what happened. It also made sure that he would still have all of his troops, giving him the advantage in the civil war since the other nobles lost so many troops at Ostagar.

He was also pretty fucking stupid. I mean, the guy went and found the one noble that absolutely everyone else hated and fully allied himself with him. Dumb. Just fucking dumb. Literally everyone other than Cousland hates Howe, and Loghain chooses him to be his right hand man. Honestly, dude probably would have won over a lot more nobles if he hadn't done that.

I don't really know how to end this. But, yeah, Cailan isn't as stupid as he's treated, and Loghain sucked so hard.

I was not prepared for finding out that Twilight originated as My Chemical Romance fan fiction

Good News!

I'm feeling much better now and will be able to stream tonight!

I hope you join me as I battle my way across Montana in a rather strange quest to bang a cult leader. I'm talking, of course, about Far Cry 5.

Live at 11:30 EST

I am going through all of the wonderful book rants that I received. I love all of them and everyone who sent them.

Even the person who trashed one of my favorite books - but don't worry, as I promised, I am not judging or arguing. I accept your rage as my own all the same.

I haven't been able to answer all of them yet, but I will.

And feel free to send in more if you want to. I am always open to them

I have a fever. Might have to break my promise I'm sorry

All of the above.

I also want to add that it is extremely unnecessary to tag your main character as being in a relationship with every other character if it's not a massive poly situation.

For example: if your fic is Tav/Astarion, you don't need to also tag it as Tav/Shadowheart Tav/Gale Tav/Wyll Tav/Karlach etc etc. If you want to indicate that those characters will be in the fic, you can tag with just their names or with Tav & [character].

There is an issue in this community with misstagged fics on AO3, specifically in the FxF tags. I don't know if it's going to reach the actual people or not but I'm still going to put this here:

A lot of MxM and FxM are tagging FxF ships in the main relationship category despite the ship itself only being written in the background.

Which is a problem because when you go into your ship tag to find fics of your ship, a ridiculous amount of them are off topic. And while yes you can lower that amount significantly by filtering and tag exclusion, AO3 has a built in feature that is made to avoid this.

I am going to use the Shadowzel tag for that because it's the most popular FxF ship on there and it's also one of the most misstagged rn. As of right now, there is 607 fics in the Shadowzel tag without filter. If you restrict the search to only include FxF, you are down to 397 fics. That is more than a third gone!

And it gets rid of some shadowzel content as well, so it's either you filter that out or you have to scroll through a tag where 1 out of 3 fics are about Astarion, Gale, Halsin, etc instead of the ship you looked up.

If your fic, let's take for example a Tav x Astarion, has either consistent mention of Shadowheart x Lae'zel, the most popular wlw ship, or has them in the background as support characters, or even just mentions them as a funny little wink and you want to make sure your readers know they are in here, you do not use the relationship tag! You go down to the additional tags and add "Minor Lae'zel/Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate)".

Unless the pairing you are tagging is the main focus or have a significant role and spotlight on them, you should not use the relationship tag! It clogs the feed for no reason, AO3 is not a website where you have to advertise your posts to the most tags possible.

Adding a visual for clarity:

Work has been absolute hell the last few days. I am utterly exhausted

all the “weird” content on tiktok feels so fabricated and performative. whereas on tumblr you’ll meet someone who will casually admit they eat paint

What is your favorite Jojo chapter, and why is it Diamond is Unbreakable?