rpanons | Tush smooshed

Tush smooshed

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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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