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

Solas romance ... I knew everything about it before going through with it and I still sat there staring at the screen when I got the last romance cutscene, like "WTF?!"

Had to make a new Inky and romance Cullen again to make me feel better

And Trespasser doesn't make it any better either, lol. Everyone else is getting married or living happily ever after (except you know, if you screw up with IB) and there is the poor Elven Inquisitor without her Vallaslin, sobbing in the corner.

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! 

Yeah, I almost wonder if that's part of the attachment, because I doubt most of us expected the very sparsely written romance to be so affecting. sigh. 

Omg that image. Haha.

I still need to play the Solas romance before I can truly comment but ... when I hear the words "sparsely written" I automatically think about how all of those gaps in the writing create space for each player to fill in their own headcanon: their own take on the motivations, interpretations, and minor twists regarding what Solas and their Lavellan are thinking and why they act the way the act.

At least for me, when a game spells out too much of the story it ends up leaving less room for my personal interpretations and that can translate into me feeling less attached to my character. So, sparsely written can be a good thing.

So one must be patient. (and consider saving Cullen's heart conversation for a rainy day, when you can run to him in despair for a brief moment of comfort quickly erased with a reload )

So one must be patient. (and consider saving Cullen's heart conversation for a rainy day, when you can run to him in despair for a brief moment of comfort quickly erased with a reload )

I still loved it more than any other romance I tried or completed. And I definitely was doing a "mostly" completionist run through; I only left off the shards and astrarium (sp?). I guess it feels more old school to me, like DA2 maybe. Also preserves the feeling that Solas is a very reserved person who is best left to himself most of the time, though occasionally he does wake up and remember you're around lol I think it worked for my personal headcanon of a sweet romance mostly lacking in physical intimacy, very slow-moving. I WOULD say if someone is expecting lots of physically passionate encounters or plenty of deep conversations, you will be, well, thirsty lol

It didn't help in my case that I played a Solasmancer on my first PT, which always takes me significantly longer because I get lost and stumped a lot. I think it took 170 hours with none of the DLCs (I had somewhere around 70 hours of gametime with no romance content between the balcony conversation and the dance.) My next run after that was almost as long, but included JoH and Descent, and was probably as close to completionist as I get. Third PT with JoH is at 134 hours and only needs Descent and Arbor wilds to finish the main game, so probably about 140 hours (I have times written down because it's the only way to find game saves )