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i don't get why people want to play characters like that. i mean, that's hardly a character. and when you have hardly a character you end up with really, really boring threads.

like--even if you want to go the friendly, sweet, and gentle route there are ways to make that interesting. mostly by ensuring that's not the be-all, end-all of the character. make their desire to avoid conflict bite them on the ass. if they're the type that wants to take care of everyone, give them compassion fatigue and then take their caretaker nature to its natural conclusion by having them avoid talking about their problems because they look out for everyone, not the other way around. (and do not have this end in gentle h/c because having your walls broken down forcefully is not a fun and romantic experience.) have your doe-eyed characters not get sarcasm--it leads to some really hilarious misunderstandings.

or, shit, go the complete opposite. assholes are a lot of fun to play and they tend to get the funnier threads. even in game, if you choose the aggressive dialogue options you get some of the funnier replies especially with characters like cullen.

gah. as someone who would love to play my wardens and inquisitors in all their messy and occasionally assholish not-glory, this seriously makes me upset. they took the best parts of a malleable protagonist and just threw them out the second story window.

because too many people self insert. that's why. they use their characters as a means of therapy or to get what they want in a fictional life when they can't get it in real life. not saying it to be a dick or that all people do this, but PEOPLE DO THIS. they do it in all fandoms, but it is something especially rampant in fandoms where you have a mostly empty protag.

i believe it was mentioned somewhere up thread by someone else, but when you start playing with one and then get to know the player and you can see the bleed happening where they mirror their protag, it's not something that makes you want to continue. especially when it happens more than once. it's creepy and off putting and this is why people don't want to play with you (general you).

tbh i cringe at h/c stuff now when it comes to this fandom. i've had it happen to me and i know some friends who play love interests have gotten the same thing over and over again. the inquisitors around enough only care about their special little sue and get off on the love interest catering to her needs. (i'd say his, but i rarely see male inquisitors pushing hard in h/c memes...???)

look, to be really honest, cullen's romance is really lacking. there's a lot of problems with it, and to be even more honest, i don't even get the feeling the inquisitor is really deeply in love with him. i know it's due to writing/time restraints in the game, but what gets me is that's what people expect when it comes to rp. cullen is treated like he doesn't have issues of his own and holy moly does he actually have legit issues, but rpers use him as an accessory. it's like people magically forget he actually has a temper and he can be kind of an asshole. he's not impervious to getting brushed off or treated like he doesn't matter. he's actually not a doormat, and that's what people seem to expect to happen. again, not saying this is everyone's experience, this is just my own and things i have seen happen to friends.

but, i'm digressing from the point, and i'm sorry -- too many feelings about dragon age, anon, forgive me.

basically, by this point, i'm distrustful of wardens/inquisitors because of past experiences. at times i have fits of hope that someone won't suck the fun and enjoyment out of something, but it happens again and again. this is mostly to blame on dwrp culture as a whole because no one wants conflict... because i guess they forget they can always do a resolution to the problem. yeah, people can play what they want to and whatever makes them happy, but honestly i am not here to play any accessory to anyone, protag or not.

petition for more asshole inquisitors, pls and thk.

i'm sorry you and your friends have had such a shit time, anon. :( i totally understand your distrust of wardens and inquisitors. i would probably be distrustful if i'd had that happen to me. (honestly, i think the only reason i haven't is because i'm relatively new to rping from da.) people are frustrating. self-inserting people all the moreso.

Now I'm even more upset because I actually really liked Cullen's romance and I definitely always felt like my Inquisitor had her shit a bit more together than Cullen during his personal arc, and I liked that you could play her being very supportive and understanding (and somewhat of a hardass, which is what I ended up going with on my second playthrough, the one where I romanced him).

i'm not being an asshole here when i ask this. i'm legit asking because i think the romance is lacking too. what part of the romance read as "very supportive" to you?

the inquisitor finds him in his office having a meltdown over the lyrium. he's falling down and in pain. and whether the inquisitor is in a relationship with him or not, he gets a pat on the shoulder and a "you can do it" or a "quit whining and take the lyrium." there's nothing to differentiate the romance aspect there.

in the sex scene, he's having a nightmare while the inquisitor puts on clothes in preparation to leave. again, he gets a pat, some variation on "i care about you" and then the inquisitor leaves. which admittedly is more than he gets about the lyrium.

it's just all about the inquisitor, understandably, because the inquisitor is the player character, but it all seems very one-sided to me.

there are no very supportive responses, and there's nothing in depth with any of it. i didn't realize just how little the romance versus the non-romance responses for most of that differed until i played through twice, once romancing him and once not.

Well, I probably do read into the responses a little more than the game intended- I'm the kind of person who presses every single conversation option and considers how the Inquisitor I'm playing in the game would feel and how they would angle the situation and the intentions behind the answers given. I have a hard time just taking it at face value because human interactions don't really work like that. I always work on the assumption that the conversations you have in game can't possibly be the only conversations that happen between the characters.

So yeah, I'm probably filling in the blanks a bit more than anyone taking it for what the game presents and what it presents alone, and I'm probably also mis-remembering a bit because it's been a good 6 months or so since I last completed the game.

TL;DR It's lacking but I'm also kind of able to fill in the gaps with my imagination. I shouldn't have to, but, to be completely honest with you, most LIs in most Bioware games need some fill-in-the-blank in order to resemble anything remotely close to actual human relationships.

i think all of us headcanon a bit to fill in the blanks and to expand on scenes, especially if we're really into the game or we write dai fic. my rp partner and i do fix-its for scenes we find particularly lacking or for those we feel we should have gotten.

here's the thing though, with respect to inquisitors in general. we've all played the game. a lot of us, me included, try different dialogue options. but whether male or female, the inquisitors are largely the same. their dialogue options are the same whether male or female. so it isn't like we don't know what to expect with inquisitors. it's the player, who's adding all the headcanon, that makes them different from one another. so when you say stuff like "(That's assuming some pretty awful stuff about someone if you had any idea what the Inquisitor I played was actually like... Yikes.)" yes, we know what they were like because we played the same game you did. we got the same choices, we got the same dialogue, we got the same romance scenes. that's why you come off as a self-insert player, because literally the only thing that makes your inquisitor special happens in your head. which is great that you've developed her beyond what bioware has given us! i did the same with mine, but where other people are concerned, i don't expect anyone to care about him or act like he's some great character li players should want to tag. he's only special to me.

and for someone to headcanon the entire relationship (which is what you have to do if you want it to be a good one) and then try to rp it and expect the li player to just go along with it is the problem. it's your (general you) headcanon for your video game playthrough and your fics and art and whatever. but when you rp with strangers, you can't force it on li players or expect them to just fall in line with whatever you decided. rp is a collaborative effort.

you said your were the op of the original comment, which i'm assuming was the "are there any cullens who don't want the d" comment. here's my advice to you, if you want cullen players to play with you. don't tag with the expectation of an established relationship. offer to build it with the player, if they're willing to ship the inquisitor and cullen. that way you're both developing the relationship and it isn't one-sided and only a rewarding experience for you. acknowledge that you're aware of the game's flaws and let the player know you want to build a GOOD relationship between them, instead of approaching it as "omg perfect relationship, so sweet, love my inquisitor" like i've seen people do. because that is terribly off-putting and a big warning sign to avoid overinvested self-insert players.

and don't worry about who else the cullen player tags. whether they have a hundred m/m threads is irrelevant if they're interested in playing m/f with you. i play a lot of m/m with cullen, but i've got a few m/f threads and i adore them. i would love to play more of them (if i could find female castmates who wanted to play it with me).

i'm not saying this to pick on you. i'm trying to help you understand how players with a similar attitude to yours come off to those of us who play the li characters and why we're so hesitant to tag inquisitors.

because i want to play with inquisitors. i want to deal with the marriage and the loss of the inquisitor's arm so badly. there are so many things i want to play with cullen and the inquisitor and it's frustrating that i can't find inquisitors to do it with.

i'm the other anon down below and you've basically said everything i could've said back, so here to just +1 and say i'm glad i'm not the only one seeing things this way.

i was so glad to see this. it encapsulated pretty much everything i wanted to say in response to that comment. the only thing i want to elaborate on is something someone else touched on.

the very unfortunate fact is that dozens of players of wardens, going all the way back to the release of Origins, have ship pushed and been incredibly entitled and dismissive of companion players, treating them like accessories to the all about the warden show. when inquisition came along, we were then flooded with the exact same behavior and attitudes from inquisitor players. many of the people drawn to playing inquisitors were the same ones who played the wardens before that.

what that leaves potential future inquisitor players with is a lot of very wary companion players who are on the look out for the behaviors that put them off of playing with dozens of wardens and inquisitors before this new unknown comes along. you can't just erase the cumulative bad experiences a lot of us have had by saying you're different, or you're nice, or you have better intentions. you have to not exhibit the traits that are warning signs. defensiveness about the inquisitor is one of the biggest ones. the instant i sense defensiveness about the character itself when we've both played the same game, some of us repeatedly, i'm out.

defensiveness ooc of any criticism of the dialog options in the game, wanting to regurgitate game scenes where the inquisitor was given gifts or doted on, wanting to start the rp with the romance already solid and developed without bothering to find out what the other player wants first, glossing over issues or concerns the companion character has, power gaming, coming across as using the character as your personal axe to grind over whatever sj issue you've attached to the game, whining about how you saw me playing x with y character so why not yours, sending me worried pms that you've "done something wrong" when my character snaps at yours or disagrees with something they want. it would be nice to say this has only happened once or twice. no. dozens of people since 2009 behaving the same ways over and over.

that's what you're up against when you decide to play a malleable protag here in this fandom. walk into it with your eyes open, be sensitive to the fact that you're dealing with jaded, fatigued players when it comes to the protags, and don't make the same mistakes. you're going to have to earn some trust. whether it's fair or not, that's the situation. if you still don't understand it, i'd recommend picking up a popular li for a while and playing them in public places. trust me when i say you'll get a big taste of everything all of us have been talking about pretty quickly.

you said your were the op of the original comment, which i'm assuming was the "are there any cullens who don't want the d" comment.

I think this is where the whole conversation goes off the rails because I'm not the person who made that comment and that isn't how I feel at all. I don't care who you play with aside from me, at all.

I'm the person who made the "I'm upset because you guys are being shafted out of good play by bad characters who want to make it about themselves/their character and not about the interaction/both characters together as a unit" commenter.

I understand you guys have played with some really lackluster people but I kind of feel like you're making assumptions about me and the way I play and my expectations of what I'd want out of playing without actually hearing them. (Because to be honest the best part of a relationship is the build-up, especially in a long-term roleplay engagement I'd be really annoyed with just assuming the relationship is already in play- and that kind of sounds like the kind of thing you're saying is in the 'want' pile.)

IDK I've been kind of turned off from this whole thing at this point thanks to the misunderstanding I guess, but I do hope you guys find what you're looking for because I understand how frustrating it can be to want to play something but to never find anyone who can hit all of the right notes as a player and a writer to do it for you.

how you started out your reply already gives me the impression that you may be pushing the envelope in identifying too strongly with your inquisitor. which, you do you, but take a little step back and look at the bigger picture here if you would for a minute.

i don't know what additional things i can add since an anon already pointed out my gripes with this. but in all honesty, the scene where he's discussing the lyrium and what happened to him in kinloch, the inquisitor really isn't that supportive. he literally bares his soul and arguably shares some Really Deep Feelings about what happened to him in the past, and what it culminates to is that the inquisitor puts a hand on his shoulder to affirm he can....... then literally walks away. he's dealing with heavy life altering shit, and the inquisitor walks away. there is no difference between the romance and unromanced. regardless of gender/race, the inquisitor unquestionably sucks at comfort in this scene.

and, again, after their "sex" scene, the inquisitor is literally fully dressed while cullen lays there naked and in the throes of a nightmare. now, it's easy enough to assume she's about to leave in a hurry. no one jams their clothes on like that if they're not. and what the hell. that's rude af (though not uncommon, i realize). yeah, sure, ~loving~ words are exchanged, but AGAIN, the inquisitor leaves after cullen bares yet ANOTHER part of himself that he doesn't openly share with just anyone. and there she goes, smell ya l8r alligator.

and yes, i realize this is all due to writing. but let's see it for how it is. it was rushed and half-assed. bioware's even said cullen and solas were tacked on later. i'm not saying there aren't good scenes in cullen's romance, i'm quite fond of the one in the chantry before the final battle myself. there's nothing wrong with liking things, but recognize the problems in it and don't pull the wool over your own eyes about it.

i'd like to add to this and say that whenever something happens that benefits the inquisitor, she doesn't walk away. cullen gives her the coin as a sign of his devotion, she stays. cullen comforts her in the chantry, she stays. cullen reassures her that he doesn't have residual feelings for the hero of ferelden (if mage warden). cullen assures her that he doesn't think less of her if she's a mage or an elf or whatever. cullen gives and there she is, taking and taking and taking.

in practically every scene with him, it's all about how much he loves and cares for her. if memory serves, there's only one option to tell him that the inquisitor loves him, but there are plenty more to avoid it!

after he bares his soul to her with respect to the lyrium, she can manipulate him into taking again AND STILL keep the relationship by then making some lame promise to "find a solution later." don't worry cullen, you might lose your mind and your sanity, but we'll worry about that later.

this romance could have been great and it was full of this crap that paints cullen as the endlessly devoted dope who sticks by the inquisitor regardless of how she treats him. and then there are all these female inquisitor players who gush about how wonderful~ the romance is and basically treat him like an accessory whose sole purpose is to dote on her and worship the ground she walks on. really?

i like the cut of your jib, anon. should've added that in myself.

the lyrium part of all of that is what really bothered me. the fact that you could make him start using again and still have the inquisitor stay romanced as long as she said, oh, hey, we'll worry about all that later was pretty gross and came across as manipulative and abusive from my perspective.

it was very clear he wanted to stay off the lyrium. he said himself he wants nothing to do with that life anymore. so yeah. that bugged me. it bugged me that any other character could force such a huge personal decision on another all in the name of being more effective for the inquisition. i could see a detached commander inquisitor making that decision because of viewing everyone around them as resources. i could not see anyone who supposedly loved another human being doing that and thinking that they're actually good for that person in any way or really even calling that love at all.

i did like that if she told him to take it with no allowances for looking into a solution later he stone cold broke it off with her and pretty much had nothing left to say to her outside of inquisition business.

overall the romance was very one sided. sure, i can see why from the inquisitor's perspective it was sunshine and roses. she got doted on and basically the human equivalent of a loyal guard dog. looking at it from cullen's perspective, i found myself asking myself many times what he was getting out of it and why he fell so hard for someone who came across as emotionally stunted when it came time to be supportive instead of accepting support.

how you started out your reply already gives me the impression that you may be pushing the envelope in identifying too strongly with your inquisitor.

I don't really have to identify with them to fill in the gaps on what I believe would resemble a normal human relationship. Like I said already in another comment, it's been a while since I played so I may be remembering certain dialogue options wrong, but please don't just assume I'm a self-insert based on the fact that I enjoyed an aspect of the game. :\ (That's assuming some pretty awful stuff about someone if you had any idea what the Inquisitor I played was actually like... Yikes.)

Especially considering it sounds to me like everyone's getting annoyed with people playing the relationship as it's portrayed in canon (comfort meeeeeeee), which is admittedly underwhelming, irritating, and terrible roleplay, I have to admit the accusation strikes me as... unwelcoming? I read more into it because I put more into it, not because I took it for what it was at face value. I thought about it.

I'm not saying your opinion of the portrayal is wrong and looking back with a little more clarity (since it had been so long) I 100% agree with you, but that doesn't mean there weren't aspects of it I enjoyed engaging with and liked the ideas of even if not the execution. Nowhere did I say that it was perfect, just that I liked it.

i wasn't going to bother replying to this since another anon said enough a couple comments up and covered basically all i could've said back, and there's enough repetition in this thread already. but in the spirit of friendly open dialogue, i'm going to say a few things.

to be frank, i'm going to assume every inquisitor is a self-insert. after dealing with all i have on dw, way back in the ancient days of lj and even seeing people on tumblr (not even rpers, but generally speaking of the overly invested in their protag sort), i've been conditioned to think that. when you reach the double digits of self-inserts via protags, you assume the worst first before proven otherwise. also, this isn't simply relegated to dragon age, but all games with malleable protags. that's just how it is because people who came before you did, in fact, ruin it for everyone else. this is just me speaking for me, not for anyone else. so, yes, in essence, inquisitors are an unwelcome sight to me. but, i am just one anon.

you're literally not the only one who's put more thought into the game, the dialogues, the interactions. everyone who's played it has. even the people who don't rp or write from it put additional thought into it because that is just what the game prompts you to do. BUT!! all those additional thoughts belong to each and every person who thought them. which means they won't be the same and person a's won't align with person b's. and it's this part here that a lot of inquisitor players have the problem with. people don't know your inquisitor. we all know the main quest/side quest/judgment outcomes and it's all fine, well, and good to have those up in journals, but the fact remains: we are not going to know your inquisitor at all. what a player puts into it does make them different. assuming relationships is a huge no-no in any sort of situation, but it sucks a hell of a lot more for a possible canon li. but the other anon already said this.

not once did i make the claim of you saying the romance was perfect. what you said was "and I liked that you could play her being very supportive and understanding", of which i argued against with the facts of the actual game. there's parts i like of his romance, too, but i know the flaws of it and i'm not going to trick myself into believing it was supportive when it wasn't. even UNROMANCED it wasn't supportive. and that i don't like about the whole thing.

gonna chime in here and say that no one is entitled to a ship. just because you play an inquisitor and i play a potential love interest does not mean that you're entitled to have threads with my character. the minute you start adding in a bunch of headcanon that changes the character from what is shown in the game (and therefore what i expect from an inquisitor), the onus is on you to present the character as interesting and compelling enough for me to want to thread with her/him. "because it's canon and it would be ooc not to" is not a good reason and ship pushing and acting entitled to it "because i romanced him in the game!!!!" is a surefire way to make sure i don't tag you back.

i think this is really the crux of the problem. with established canon characters like the companions of protags, there is a well defined back story. there are traits that are set in stone. although every player will bring their own minor spin or flair on interpretation, if you're playing with good players, the experience will be fairly seamless. one dorian won't differ significantly from another dorian. when you get tagged by him, you're not playing a guessing game about his motives, major details of his back story, or how he related to the other companions. too much head canoning is discouraged in canon characters.

but for malleable protags, in order to make them anything more than cardboard cutouts of game mechanics and limited choices, you have to head canon. as a protag player, when you tag a sera or a bull or a cullen, you know what to expect. if it differs too much from what you expect, you say they're a bad version and you stop playing with them. but those sera, bull, or cullen players have NO idea what to expect from your inquisitor. if you go strictly by game personality, you're going to be flat and tedious. if your head canon traits are annoying or repellent to the players behind the companion characters, their immersion is now shot. "well, it's IC for them to like or support the inquisitor." your version of the inquisitor is too far off of their own head canon from their game for them to find it enjoyable.

i think this is one of the number one reasons assumed cr with protags can be so difficult and is rarely as fun for the companion character player as the protag player. the protag player gets their immersion in canon play. the companion player feels more like they're playing with an oc which may or may not appeal to them but is hemmed in by an expectation to be ic.

i was in such a hurry to plus one this that i almost forgot to log out.

everyone who wants to play a protag should read this anon's comment.

i want to play my companion character off of a protag i recognize. weird sparklesue headcanons that contradict lore or what paltry background we're given makes the protag unrecognizable and unenjoyable to me, because it's obviously a self-insert or blatant wish fulfillment. i don't want to play with an oc or self-insert protag any more than protag players want weird self-insert/oc/sj spouting companion characters.

ask yourself if you would like to play the li to a character like your protag. if the answer is no, chances are we feel the same way.

Oh, well there's the problem. :| People assuming the CR is already in place.

I've never done that and wouldn't have considered doing it, really, unless previously agreed upon with the player in question.

The build-up is the best part of the relationship to play out, skipping that part isn't fun for me.

Also don't the player characters kind of halfway have to be OCs? Even if you're working from the skeleton of the character the game provides, there's going to be a lot more headcanon involved than with most other characters in most other series.

More and more this is making me wish I could pick up one of the other characters in the game but none of them grabbed me in a way that made me feel like I could handle them. :(

that's all fine, well, and good that you don't, anon. and good for you! (and i mean that most sincerely and not sarcastically.) but many people don't and it is a problem. as you can see in this thread it's a huge problem among cullen players, was (is??) with alistair players, and to a lesser extent the other love interests. people don't seem to care to ask anymore and just assume whatever the hell they want and believe they're entitled for their thread partner to just fall in line. it's annoying, it makes us LI players distrustful and bitter, as you can see.

i agree, the build-up is the best part. i prefer that to the relationship. of the times i actually did get to, people then get comfortable with that and then expect the relationship to be nothing but sunshine and roses. what world do you (general) live in where relationships are always happy???

anyway, yes, protags DO have to be OCs. they're basically given a backstory and then the player fills out the rest. what we're all trying to say is we can't know what the rest is until we thread with you ourselves. we know the skeleton of what put them together/how they got to be the inquisitor, it's the little things that make up the rest of their personalities that we don't know. i honestly can't tell you how many inquisitors i've seen that deviate from the CANON GIVEN history. it's obnoxious tbh. your trevelyan was in the ostwick circle, period. they didn't ~leave to find their own way~ or whatever. your lavellan mage was sent to the conclave by the keeper, they didn't ~grow up in an alienage~. that bullshit is just that: bullshit. hey, have it be an au if you want, that's no big deal. but don't sit there and claim it's ~your canon~ when... it isn't canon at all.

there's a very fine line with protags and 98% of rpers get it wrong, so mostly we just don't want to deal with it anymore and we're kind of getting tired of the entitlement of inquisitors in this fandom demanding attention when they're literally doing everything wrong.

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