After spending weeks in frustration and fear of the impending doom called -bleep-, I have received a request from someone who is dying for Blondie from Dragon Age: Origins to send her a letter while in Amaranthine. Dunno why it's me, but apparently the Alistair I wrote (and subsequently forgot about) sounded real. Or something. Whatever. Anyway, I had a hankering for wrangling my hair out while trying to figure out how to use the thing, so off I went, full of idiocy optimism that I can implement codices in no time!

Now, I've used the Aurora Toolset before. This was back in 2006 or something, when I was editing cutscenes for some Neverwinter Nights module. And I thought that was unwieldy, but at least the modules made sense somewhat and there were no unwieldy coding. Not that much anyway. I liked the Aurora Toolset. It didn't have a steep learning curve.

Enter Neverwinter Nights II. The new toolset was harder to use. But at least, apart from the swirling memory vortex which threatened to suck out all my ram, digest it, then tell me it wanted more, I could do what I wanted it to do. Creating meshes is a different game entirely, pun intended, but editing dialogue and setting flags wasn't that big of a deal, unless you wanted to create subroutines that led to subroutines that led to subroutines that led to... well, you get the point. Adding voiceover, if I wanted to, was no torture either.

Then there is this piece of junk.

First off, I knew something was wrong when I encountered the problem of not being able to convert the facial contour map (.mor files) to... anything else, really. So whatever Warden you managed to perfect in the character creator, well, woe be to you because you can't edit much else apart from eye colour and hair style. To create a preset you need to open the toolset, which eats up my memory like it hasn't been fed in days, make a new head morph from scratch, export it to a different file format. Argh. Which you now can't edit outside the character generator. But what if I wanted to make my handsome Cousland Warden's chin a little wider? Huh? HUH?!

Okay, fine. I gave up trying to perfect my Warden. She looked fine. But then I bumped into the problem of....

Not being able to find the source files for the expansion, Dragon Age: Awakening. Oh, I can find the erfs, but where the heck is the module? Or the area, to speak of? I need to make a placeable in the Throne Room in Vigil's Keep but I can't open Vigil's Keep, so there goes that.

Looking for tutorials has yielded scant results. I now have to edit code, which I hate doing because I usually have no idea what I'm doing, write Blondie's letter (dunno what he'd write... can he write? I'm assuming he's at least literate), implement it into the game, then create a dazip so I can distribute it.

Too much work? I'd say so. But apparently nobody wants a codex from the kennelmaster to the Commander of the Grey in Amaranthine to report how the dog is doing, oh no. It appears everyone who's either gay or female and has played that game wants some sickly letter from the blond creampuff about how he misses [insert name here] and how he wants to be by [third person gender appropriate possessive pronoun] side and whatnot. I'm sending him off to Weisshaupt, because that's what the slides showed at the end of the previous campaign.

Ugh. I guess I'll write the entry first, since I'll get to agonise over whether "trespass" would even be in Blondie's vocabulary, then figure out the implementation later.

My pen fancy has struck me again, and I've been having fun with my pens and inks, partly because suddenly I have found myself inundated with correspondence and just things that requires actual writing, as opposed to e-mails and other modern technologies. There are quite a world out there that you can designate as your combination, with nib widths, ink colours, and paper.

For example, I use moleskine for my notes. A red cahier, actually, and I use Platinum Preppy and Lamy EF to write in them. My colleague uses Rhodia and Pilot. Quite a different end-product (mine definitely looks more feminine, hands down). Mine’s a bit more colourful, owing to quite a few Preppies I have at my arsenal.

It’s been a while since I’ve written this much by hand. Sure, I take my notes by hand, mark papers by hand, but they’re jotting, really, not much more than a few sentences at a time. But with these, letters included, they’re proper writing, with sitting down, thinking, picking up a pen. It’s a rather methodical process: sit down, select the ink (or make sure the ink is loaded), ponder what to write, place the ink eradicators and whatnot around, uncap the pen, begin writing. It’s a bit different from snatching a Bic from the table and jotting a few notes.

Writing (not typing, but writing), as I’ve recently rediscovered, is a rather thoughtful, meditative process. I’ve written letters – constantly, even, as Mr “I want to remain nameless” and I have kept steady correspondence across the Atlantic and across the continent for the past seven years – but only recently have I closely examined the actual process of writing, both mental and physical. Unlike word processing, you can’t really just hit backspace and delete the sentence you wrote, so you tend to get more careful as you write. Word selection becomes a little more important; penmanship becomes a little more of a concern; and unlike e-mails, there is an actual physical process of destroying letters, as opposed to just hitting delete, so each word becomes heavier.

Your emotions do show up in your penmanship. When I am distressed, my handwriting becomes a little more erratic; when I am calm, they are neater, more regular. My ink colour selection also reflects my mood; when I am feeling prim and proper, I tend to select blue; when I am feeling fanciful, brighter colours show up.

I think, as we progress through technology, we are losing more and more personal touches. Letters became phone calls, which became e-mails and instant messaging; and severing ties became easier and easier, until all it took were two buttons to hit delete. Cards became replaced with facebook messages and e-cards, which get lost in the myriad of electronic information we get bombarded with. Relationships between two people can be quickly forgotten with a few clicks, the past sealed away.

Is this a good thing? Perhaps. Perhaps it is a good thing to be able to forget the past and seal away previous acquaintances. But I am glad Mr Nameless had written me letters all this time; I’d be cleaning my room and stumble upon the bundle of letters he wrote, and I’d remember the ache. Once upon a time, he and I were happy. Those moments were forever crystallised in those penned words, and it’s much harder to rip up letters than hit delete on a phone.

Mr Nameless has taken a step further (oh dear). He has decided that pen nib, his penmanship (or a lack thereof…), and his ink colours don’t quite identify the sender as himself. And so, enter sealing waxes.

Originally, as we know, sealing waxes were designed for hand-delivered letters, to prevent tampering. It’s a bit more ceremonial these days, but I think he wants an ending action to his letter-writing. After all, he writes to me the most, and apparently, he has a sort of a ritual; a nice cup of tea, a pen, an ink colour selected out (although it’s usually blue… different shade of blue, perhaps?), good writing pad in front of him, looking out the window, music filtering out from the speakers. Writing is reaching out to the recipient through pen and paper, and the paper is actually something the writer has touched, felt; it’s different from a printed out e-mail. It is akin to what Cyrano said, in Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac:

Un baiser, mais à tout prendre, qu'est-ce ?
Un serment fait d'un peu plus près, une promesse
Plus précise, un aveu qui veut se confirmer,
Un point rose qu'on met sur l'i du verbe aimer;
C'est un secret qui prend la bouche pour oreille,
Un instant d'infini qui fait un bruit d'abeille,
Une communion ayant un goût de fleur,
Une façon d'un peu se respirer le cœur,
Et d'un peu se goûter, au bord des lèvres, l'âme !

Not quite a kiss, our letters, but a promise all the same; a hug stuffed in an envelope, a kiss lovingly tucked into a page. And when he finishes tucking that hug into the paper, apparently he wants to seal it with wax and a seal that says, “it’s from me”.

And so he has his seal, and he has his samples of wax. He’s trying to decide between midnight blue, forest green, and silver. He’s leaning towards green but he also likes silver. I’ve told him to maybe mix both. He’s pondering. Another mark left on paper to tell me that he’s in my life, and that we share moments, even when we are apart.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Dragon Age II began. And since my Warden fell in love with her fellow Warden, I decided that Hawke will not fall in love with Anders – who’s far too like Alistair anyway – and will go for the elf instead.

My god, he’s a PAIN IN THE ASS.

First of all, he’s moody. Really moody. And very combative. It didn’t start off well either. The conversation went like this:

Fenris: We should be cautious. No need to throw away life so needlessly.
Hawke: Alright.
Fenris: (storms into the manor) DANARIUS! I’M RIGHT HERE AND I’M GONNA HAVE YOUR HEAD!
Hawke: (facepalm)

And then, as it turns out, if Hawke has a relationship with Anders, no Fenris loving time for you! What the hell did he want, a virgin?

Now, my Warden was a virgin (there’s a dialogue option that allows the player to tell this). But I have no idea about Hawke. However, romance with Anders happened rather precipitously, with Anders going “STOP STRINGING ME ALONG” and Hawke going “Well, let’s see, let’s drive this guy, who’s already nuts, more nuts, shall we?”. And then boom. Kissy time. Hawke then went home, and shagging occurred. What the hell. What kind of a relationship goes from first kiss to first shag in one night? Amazing.

Back to Fenris. He’s not exactly the most wooing guy in the world. After first Fenris sexy time, he dumps you. Douchebag. When Hawke’s mother dies, he can’t be a bigger prick if he tried.

So why is my Hawke trying to romance him? Well, truth be told, no romance option in Dragon Age II is decent. In Dragon Age: Origins, both romance options for a heterosexual female Warden were decent; shy and sensitive and proper or rambunctious and outrageous. But this time, it’s either:

A: Anders, who loves you, cherishes you, then blows up a chantry and starts a war,
B: Fenris, who is more than slightly emo (sorry Fenris) and generally seems to have a penis on his head, or
C: Sebastian, who’ll marry you, but never give you sexy time. Which baffles me. Marriage without physical intimacy seems kind of cruel.

So Bioware, for the next Dragon Age, please make a decent romance option that won’t necessarily break the hero’s heart.

Okay, back to seducing the emo elf.

I've had the misfortune (or fortune) to be introduced to PC RPG games when I was in year 8. All credits go to Kori Miller, wherever you are, and my English teacher, who taught me many other ways to waste time in general. Anyway, as some of us know, I finally got Dragon Age Origins, and my goodness that thing's hilarious.

Like...

Creeeeeepy.

Or this:


This just ruins the tension and the mood.

I think I'm getting bored of the game, as I've deviated from saving the continent from the imminent doom and I'm just making my party dance to Thriller.

What of Skyrim? You may ask. Ah, dear friends, that game is annoying me. It's fetch for most of the time, and I can't stop running into walls most of the time. The mouse control of direction and going forward with AWSD is annoying. Why couldn't they do what NWN/NWN2/DAO/DAII did?! Baffling. So unless they come out with a mod, that game's on hold until I can get used to spinning views.