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guardian-instincts-bad · 8 months

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okay none of this is new information but as usual i am thinking about gorrik and arenanet just. really never considered the timeline of his life and the implications of that at all, huh

like, okay, for eod you needed him to have a relationship to ankka and you needed ankka to have connections to the aetherblades, so you threw them both in thaumanova, fine

except. thaumanova. which blew up in 1324.

and no, we don't have a canon age for gorrik. but we know taimi's age, that she was friends with blish, and that blish is older than gorrik

now. taimi didn't know that the brothers had joined the inquest. which means either they'd kept it a secret from her, or more likely, it happened after they lost touch

taimi was born in 1313, meaning that the absolute oldest she could have been when she last saw them, is ten

now sure, taimi skipped a couple years, she's a prodigy even among asura - but age really matters when you're in single digits. for blish to be a friend, rather than a mentor, he can't be much older than maybe four years above her? i'd put that as the reasonable upper limit, they could be closer

(i'd also honestly guess that gorrik is a bit younger than taimi, given a) how much he looks up to blish, and b) that taimi prior to s4 only thought of him as blish's weird little brother, they weren't friends. and again, at that young, age matters - if you're 7, your friend is 10, and his little brother is 8 or 9, your first connection to him is probably not "oh, the little brother", because he's not little to you)

but assuming im wrong on all of that, just going back to our facts, that puts gorrik at the most about 2-3 years older than taimi

which means that the age we're looking at, for joining the inquest, thaumanova, all the stuff with ankka... he was somewhere between 9 and 13. could be even younger but im giving him the benefit of the doubt

gorrik says he never thought about ankka romantically and i believe him, but if there was ever anything there from her side, it was definitely a kiddie's first crush kinda thing, like oh we are a boy and a girl who are best friends clearly this is what romance means

because both of them were so fucking young

god knows spending her teenage years in the aetherblades was not great for ankka's everything, and by the time we find gorrik and blish in bug in the system, they've been working for the inquest for at least 8 years

that's almost half his life, at that point. working for an organisation that the thaumanova fractal and rata primus make incredibly clear does not value the lives of its workers in any way at all - they'll feed you to their latest experiment just for standing there, and gorrik wasn't just keeping his head down and going along with it, gorrik was actively sabotaging their research when he morally disagreed with it

(and this isn't even getting into why they joined the inquest in the first place, which i will bet anything i own on being because of blish's illness and needing the technology to save him)

and to their credit, i do think this comes across in bug in the system! because if you go back to early gorrik, first half of s4, having played through the rest of the story? the difference is shocking, like he is so distrusting and snide and defensive as hell of his brother, he talks like he expects you to attack him or blish at any moment

but then they never do anything with that ever again, and like, i love all the new gorrik content, genuinely i do, but arenanet there are layers to this character that you have entirely forgotten about, and god i wish we had a story that actually explored that

#my friends have heard me give this rant so many times already but tumblr hasn't!#so i need to post it bc it is driving me insane again #asura trio forever in my heart #also i've joked a lot about how funny it is that rama is literally the only npc in the gyala story who's not an engineer #rama also the only person in this mine (bar the commander) who isn't jade brotherhood former jade brotherhood or former inquest #even funnier when my commander is a former aetherblade #like hi rama sorry you are the only person here who can take the moral high ground ever #this is the demon mine of We've All Done Some Shit Okay Get Over It XD #gw2 #gorrik #ankka #taimi #blish

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system-architect · 8 months

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BELATED asura appreciation week #2 (i am slowly working my way thru these ok i spent most of my day at a ren faire) - "Do you have an Inquest OC? How did they end up in the Inquest?"

oh boy. i have a LOT of inquest characters actually! but here's these two because they're my main two, and also because i actually had an old wip i could finish up for this lmao

gunner graduated from synergetics, with a focus in mists research. his theses and projects hinged largely around the insights he gained while in the mists, but for obvious reasons he did not disclose his experiences or the fact he's a rata novan, and as a result a lot of his research ended up getting brushed up as unfounded and unhinged, which made him very bitter. he desperately needed the funding money for his huge ambitions of trying to rip open the mists (and find his dad), so he ended up getting into the inquest, and his ahead-of-its-time style theories combined with his determination made him quickly climb to overseer rank

plex also sort of entered the inquest for dad-related reasons, with his dad having been (being?) an inquest scientist who has been missing for awhile. he hopes to eventually find out why, but... on top of that im gonna be honest plex is also just kind of a gullible nervous loser who falls too easily for men in positions of authority and is a stickler for Rules And Regulations and has been sucked into this huge pyramid scheme so. he was just plain assigned evil minion at birth.

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #asura #gw2 asura #inquest #my art #asura!gunner #gunner #plex #THE COLORS WERE PICKED FROM AN ENTER THE FLORPUS SHOT.#inquest are best when just slightly goofy .#the alternate question for this day btw asks what college they attended otherwise but you Can do both #like how blish was in synergetics(? and presumably also gorrik i think)#ok further comments:#1. im very proud of this pic btw hehe i like it #2. i do loosely headcanon that gunner and arkk know of each other by proxy and focus of research... :-)#3. also yes they were coworkers for awhile before gunner blew shit skyhigh and fled #gunner was the overseer at the lab plex worked at and plex serviced his machines a lot #they become friends (and maybe.. kiss?) much later on down the road but theres drama and whatever

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ohpollenpowder · 10 days

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Mount Music Blish Hud

Attempting to use this. I say attempting because it doesn't seem to want to play the songs I've selected. Despite it being enabled and the music showing up in the list. I've tried fiddling with my sound sliders in game to no avail, though the game's music itself is turned all the way down. (But I've also tried turning that up and nothing.)

Halp.

#~misc #guild wars 2 #gw2 #blish hud #mount music

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drakeheart · 8 months

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feels like i'm the only gw2 player in existence who is wholly ambivalent about trahearne :T

#i enjoyed his character enough but everyone seems to either adore or despise him #i really disagree with the rhetoric that his death was bad writing or that anet caved to people that hated him #his death (and to a lesser extent eir's) hammered in the gravity of HoT's plot and was necessary to propel the commander into leadership #it's probably the only well written death in the game. except maybe blish. though i still think they killed him too quickly.#rhys rambles about gw2 #gw2

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guildtree · 11 months

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What Lies Within: Bottle Your Emotions Masterpost

While traveling across Tyria to fill up the Recollector with sad emotion juice, the Commander has to choose two out of four people they'd like to reminisce about, plus one mandatory option. For those who can't be bothered to replay, want dialogue for archival purposes, or don't own a necessary expansion, here is a masterlist of all the options during the Bottle Your Emotions step of the newest patch.

Spoilers. Duh.

Mai Trin (mandatory)

Blish

Cinder

Aurene

Vlast

All playthroughs were done with the same human female Commander. I have no idea if there is race-specific dialogue. I will be trying some of the other last-instance date options as well, so let me know if you'd like to see that!

#gw2 #guild wars 2 #what lies within #mai trin #blish #cinder steeltemper #aurene #vlast #gw2 spoilers

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the-noxxi · 2 years

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I’m waiting, Commander…

Since yt links do way worse here, I thought I would upload it here as well rather than link it.

#GW2 #LS4 spoilers #Blish #Noxxi #video #emotional damage

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girlbob-boypants · 8 months

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Goddddd they so badly want to pretend a single, poorly paced expac makes me bffs with Rama while shoving out the friends of like 8 years

#girlbob.txt #gw2 #just #listen. rama and yao are perfectly fine as characters #but an expac in which rama has no emotional moments and speedruns a character arc of 'oops leader cop is a fash'#and a crush on a character in the game less than yao #is not how you build up a friendship #i bonded more with blish and gorrik in two episodes of lws4 #i just #'oh that rama he sure does need our help with his date' where's my kasjory wedding instance

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miragecounseling · 9 months

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i started playing the second part of the gyala delve story and im Sobbing right now bc of the blish part

#blish was one of my faves and that episode makes me cry more than anything else in game #gw2 spoilers #even tho it came out a bit ago oh well

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dorenarox · 11 months

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This...might be because I played this game in German until rather recently, but I'm gonna have to take Cinder because i don't even know who that is?????

Most likely a Charr? But they tend to have full names????

#Me #GW2 #However - Vlast first.#Sorry Blish #Also why is Aurene on the list isn't this supposed to be NEGATIVE emotions?#Oh wait I remember #Oh that should be fun too why must they make me DECIDE?!

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queer-as-used-by-tolkien · 1 year

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Topical Character Study: Sacrifice (feat. Brother Cadfael, Thorin Oakenshield, al'Lan Mandragoran, Almorra Soulkeeper, Trahearne, Gorrik and Blish)

My new interest in the Cadfael Chronicles (I just rewatched ep 3 today; hopefully I'll be getting the books for Christmas) has made me do some thinking about the types of characters I get into.

I've described by 'type' as a collection of all the traits shared between the people I've become obsessed with. But Brother Cadfael not only defies a lot of these traits, but the ones he does possess are completely irrelevant to why I like him.

So now it's time to investigate more deeply, this time by reflecting on the places that have the most emotion surrounding it.

Brother Cadfael

I first became interested in Cadfael when he looked full in the face of a leper and did not flinch or look away. A minute later he was speaking of how God looks on the heart and not the external appearance. It takes a lot of self-control to keep oneself from having some reaction; when I saw it I thought he must be having a great struggle inside of himself to appear calm - I saw it not as a false mask, but as a sacrifice for the sake of showing love. I can't imagine how touched the leper must have felt, showing his old friend his marred face and having his friend accept him with as much warmth and love as ever before, if not more.

What really gets me about al'Lan Mandragoran is his fury when he finds the woman he loves is about to put herself into danger; the way he tries to restrain his expression of these feelings because he doesn't understand them (or doesn't want to feel them) but fails, because he does love her. And then, he forces himself to let her go anyway, because he knows she can handle herself. He doesn't let her go easily; but he lets her go because she has to, that is her duty and he understands duty. That is a sacrifice on his part, a sacrifice of his emotion for truly loving her and letting her pursue what she knows is right.

In addition and on a lesser scale - because there is not nearly as big a window into this part of his life than the other - his own dedication to his dead kingdom and his duty is staggering. There is no point where he regains something that he sacrificed for this mission to show how much he's lost for it, but he is a cold, hard warrior who has given most of his life to his calling. The Aes Sedai in his life are all afraid he will throw his life away following it, but that is his duty. I really wish we had seen him given his heart's desire so we could see how much he treasured the things he'd given up to follow his duty.

Trahearne

I first became interested in Trahearne because he died, because I had to kill him. But, upon further investigation, I liked him because of his dedication to Orr. It goes far beyond the fact that he's being forced into it (which some people prefer to emphasize); I think he really does love the land. He's made countless sacrifices for it; he's been alone all his life and never even made any progress.

And then the Commander comes along and doesn't see a terrifying necromancer or anything else people avoid him for, but instead a friend, someone to help and support, someone to encourage and uplift. Trahearne's response to this kindness, of having found someone who understands his dedication to his duty, shows me he has felt the sacrifices he's made for Orr and has done it anyway. It shows me he has decided to do his duty despite the discomfort and the pain, and that tells me that he knows he has chosen to do the right thing, that he believes in what he's doing, and that he won't waver when it gets hard.

This conviction is borne out in his last minutes of life, when he is fighting to prevent Mordremoth from returning to terrorize the sylvari - that was all he said. He didn't say 'I'm fighting for my mind and soul, please release me' - he said Mordremoth would come back. He didn't say 'I'm all but dead anyway, just kill me!' - he said his fellow sylvari would suffer. He didn't give up because it was hard or difficult; he had to die because it was the right thing to do, and he didn't give up when the Commander refused, but insisted anyway.

Thorin Oakenshield

What got me about Thorin is his insistence on doing his mission his way; he isn't going to let anyone else mess with something that is his responsibility. That is, in part, a flawed outlook, but it shows that he felt responsible for making sure the thing he was devoted to got done. At the end of the Battle of the Five Armies, after he has been mortally wounded, he staggers to an outlook to see how the battle is going. Only after seeing the victory in progress does he allow himself to literally collapse where he stands. In An Unexpected Journey, he is reluctant to trust Bilbo; this mission is important to him and he doesn't want Bilbo to mess it up. Only after Bilbo showed an understanding of Thorin's mission and the motivations behind it did Thorin welcome Bilbo into the Company. Thorin wasn't shy of rejecting a relationship that might jeopardize the mission; but once Bilbo proved himself worthy, Thorin embraced friendship with everything he had. Like with Trahearne, this shows me that he was putting the mission before his personal desires.

The tragedy of the dragon sickness was that it twisted Thorin's personality backwards: putting his personal desires (pride) before his commitment to his cause (regaining Erebor and restoring it to its former glory), and had to be bought into his former dedication by manipulating his personal desire for the Arkenstone. When he came back to himself, he returned to his former self and back to placing greater importance on his mission than his pride

al'Lan Mandragoran

What really gets me about al'Lan Mandragoran is his fury when he finds the woman he loves is about to put herself into danger; the way he tries to restrain his expression of these feelings because he doesn't understand them (or doesn't want to feel them) but fails, because he does love her. And then, Lan forces himself to let her go anyway, because he knows she can handle herself. He doesn't let her go easily; but he lets her go because she has to, that is her duty and he understands duty. That is a sacrifice on his part, a sacrifice of his emotion for truly loving her and letting her pursue what she knows is right.

In addition and on a lesser scale - because there is not nearly as big a window into this part of his life than the other - Lan's own dedication to his dead kingdom and his duty is staggering. There is no point where he regains something that he sacrificed for this mission to show how much he's lost for it, but he is a cold, hard warrior who has given most of his life to his calling. The Aes Sedai in his life are all afraid he will throw his life away following it, but that is his duty. I really wish we had seen him given his heart's desire so we could see how much he treasured the things he'd given up to follow his duty.

Gorrik (and Blish)

To me, Blish's sacrifice was compelling: he asked the Commander to leave him to die so that he could power the dragon tracker with his mechanical body. He had seen a greater purpose when he met Taimi and had dedicated himself to that.

Gorrik had spent a lot of time building a golem body for his brother. That was a huge sacrifice for him because then he had to look at his brother's mind trapped inside a machine - no easy thing for anyone. But he did it because otherwise Blish would die. When Blish did actually die, Gorrik's response was a heartwrenching whisper of "but I saved him." He'd sacrificed so much so that Blish would not die, but then Blish died anyway. Even after this, however, Gorrik, continued to aid the cause when he had little to no personal stake in it: he would continue the work his brother started.

Almorra Soulkeeper

Almorra founded the Vigil to fight the dragons. The Vigil's motto is some must fight so that all may be free. This inherently implies a sacrifice; some must fight - a sacrifice that might cost your life - for the freedom of those who do not fight. Not only is it a sacrifice, it's a sacrifice for people who are not, themselves, sacrificing.

She spent nearly ten years fighting dragons that weren't the dragon she had a personal vendette with. And even after that, she kept fighting. It was after she had proven this part of herself - that she would keep sacrificing, not for revenge, but because it was the right thing to do - that she finally lost her life. It was thought that she'd fallen fighting dragon minions, that Bangar and Ryland had come along after and given her the proper respect and buried her.

But then it was discovered that she had not lost her life fighting dragons, but defending herself from Bangar and Ryland - the people who should have been her allies, the people who, despite our animosity, we had thought would have shown her kindness. It was the most unjust death - the most pointless, meaningless death - because it was not a sacrifice for something she believed in, but betrayal from those who should have acted like decent people.

~oOoOo~

So it seems the central determining factor to why I like characters is the theme of duty and dedication - revealed through sacrifice. The degree of a person's dedication can be seen through the amount the person is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of it. Because the characters are giving a thing up, we do not see how much it meant to the characters unless we give it to them despite their sacrifice and see how much they treasure the gift.

(I did not include Forgal Kernsson on this list because his sacrifice and personality never triggered emotion in me; rather I came to like him through my own writing.)

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