The Old Guard (Ye Olde Cullen Thread v4.0 + gen discussion)

I'm actually kind of confused that I saved that picture, I must have thought it was hilarious. It's the only thing I have saved from the thread and there was A LOT of save worthy pics on there, heh.

Maybe because I never thought the Prime BSN would shut down and I could alway go back and look at them again

True dat! 

What about Halloween? It could be a costume party. I'll be dressed up - as far as you all know.   For real though, it will be after BSN is gone for good. 

At least 3 different forums were created (or may have already existed in some form,) and they all encouraged people to move there. We kind of waited to see what would look best and picked one for our retirement home The Solas crowd mostly moved here, and the dwarves started Tapster's Tavern here as well, so I think that helped (well, I may have been one of the few following Tapster's .) Dunno about seeing imports from the boards here, though.

Posted this in the other Cullen thread, sharing here too.



^This artist has a lot of amazing Cullen works, like



And, uh... Ima just... leave this here... nsfw

Good to hear that Fexelea is working on copying the rest of old BSN.  There were quite a few gems on those threads, especially in the older threads from many years back when various devs clarified certain aspects of the lore and some of the fan-based headcanon and commentary was pretty interesting.

I reference the DA wikia often enough and quite a few entries in the wikia reference quotes from devs in old BSN threads.  



Hahaha. Retirement home. Well, I guess that may be true now that Cullen's story arc has probably run its full course. (sadly)  

During the brief bit of time in early august when I had laptop+internet access, I saw a confusing flurry of action and I made a fextralife but that was at the beginning of it all. And then I remembered at the last minute that BSN was shutting down sometime in late august so I purposefully looked up the cullen thread to see if any plans had been made. 

I have lived through various fandom platform upheavals over the years and, for better or worse, every time people flee a platform, they always seem to scatter to a bunch of different places rather than end up in one place.  Sigh...  

Yeah, true that. We were an island of calm and friendship amidst a sea of filth. There were other lovely islands, too, (like the Solas thread), but I can certainly see how the BSN was a liability for the company. I wouldn't want my company name attached to vitriolic misogynistic, homophobic, racist, etc. comments. It's different if these comments are being made via an outside platform like Twitter or Reddit. But when your company is hosting the forum, you probably have legal obligations to police that forum... just guessing, obviously.

Besides, I like this place already. I can say dirty words

I HIGHLY recommend it!! My Solasmance playthrough was the only time I really felt overwhelming positive towards the character. Every other time I can sense my inquisitor is wary of Solas, or finds him very arrogant, or *insert negative feeilng*. But when you romance him, well, you're in love with him. And you see him in a different light. My inquisitor admired him rather than thought him arrogant. The final Trespasser scene was also incredibly, indescribably painful. Tbh I feel bad for those who make this their canon... it's that awful (but like, a "good" kind of awful, you know, like a bittersweet end to a book or movie). Since mine was noncanon I could just pretend it never happened and fall back on a post-game fic I'd written that ends, well, not necessarily happily-ever-after, but definitely not with Solas telling you he loves you but you're just a sad little mortal so you gots to die with all the rest lol

I hear where you're coming from. But the thing is, playing the Solas romance really is different. The man LOVES you. Like, he can't help himself; he's head over heels. That does change things. Even if you're on the outside looking in, maybe you could imagine an inquisitor falling for him? I admit I tend to identify with my characters a lot, which I guess is why I can only romance characters I really really like. (Some I'll give the sporting try and even though I like them, it's just kinda meh and I never do it again or sometimes don't even finish the romance. Anders is the one who springs to mind first. Really really like the character but the romance just didn't tickle all my romance triggers I guess.)

Yeah, the loss of the projects and mods is distressing. At least the devs have extended their shelf life on the BSN, but not indeterminately. I myself haven't backed up all the DLC and patches yet... which I'll need to do since my gaming machine just ate it big time. 

In terms of the forums, their closure is certainly past due. The devs themselves have shunned their own forums since before they transitioned to the most recent new platform. :shrug: Hard to know what Bioware fans really will do in the interim before new games come out. I don't know if the population that transitioned here, over 1000+ users last I heard, is enough to be sustainable. I doubt it will draw in the passersby in enough numbers to replenish as it loses people. But who knows. For now, it's a place for us to land. The few of us who are left. Cullen thread v.3.0 tested us. 

OH NO!!! HAHAHAHAH!  You know, this sounds like it has the potential for me to headcanon it as a trainwreck. I suspect I will try to find a way to make it a bit of a hatemance from the Inquisitor's POV, although I don't know how much the game will allow that. Well, I'll just have to wait and see what happens!

Across all of my Wardens and Hawkes (plus my one completed Inquisitor and the few who are stuck wandering in the Hinterlands), I tend to only have one OC each whom I identify with at some level, although as I develop them as characters with their own motivations inside their own canon, I eventually end up thinking of them more as fictional creations and less as someone I personally identify with. Eventually they get to the point where I feel like I understand who they are and why they make the choices they make. That is when I stop identifying with them as an extension of myself and, instead, become the outsider who looks in, even if I do related to certain aspects of them and their choices. On the other hand, the rest of my Wardens and Hawkes are characters whom I have created for specific game decisions and to play other romances. For those I am very much the outsider looking in. Some of them are sympathetic characters and others are horrible, terrible, embarrassing people. 

For DAO and DA2 I identified most with the first characters I played before distancing myself from them by fictionalizing them as individuals. My reaction to DAI was different. I actually did not identify at all with my first Inquisitor (a fem!trevelyan). Instead, I immediately jumped into that sense of being an outsider looking in as I watched her and Cullen fall for each other while trying to put the world back together. Not sure why that happened but it did.

I have no idea how I will really feel about the Solasmance until I play it -- which I really want to do soon -- but I am comfortable taking the role of the outsider who is creating a story within the game's parameters so, *shrug*, I guess I just have to wait and see what happens.   

Although the thought of Solas being head over heels over the inquisitor makes me EvilGrin with trainwrecky ideas. Double that if it is an alt-canon Inquisitor Merrill who is filled with mixed emotions and ends up questioning everything she has ever believed. (p.s. I love Merrill)

OMG. Now I really need to play a Solasmance to find out what happens. hahahhahaha. I think I am starting to see the appeal it has, even though I'm likely to turn up the volume on the trainwreck aspects!