Just a BioWare Fan

Much to my utter disappointment, yesterday Grooveshark closed down and I've lost my BioWare playlists and every embed except YouTube videos. If anyone knows of a comparable service that doesn't make you have an account to listen and allows for embeds, please let me know. I'll be exploring the possibility of SoundCloud but I fear few of the songs will be on the service.

Because almost none of my song posts (and my entire music blog) have songs in them any longer I will be finding or making videos for each of them. I'll also be remaking the playlists on Spotify, short of a better option at the moment, and reposting them on my BioWare Music page. The links on the songs listed all point either to The Not-Pop Jukebox (which no longer is) or to posts here at Just a BioWare Fan so all of them will need to be replaced as well.

The replacement of all of the music will be a slow process but I'm going to leave up the page with the explanations as I work in case anyone's curious enough to listen to the songs even if they have to find them on their own. I...probably won't start for a few days. Right now I'm devastated at the closing and the loss of literally years worth of passionate support for the site. If you've got a spare curse or ten, go ahead and send them to record companies that insisted not only on royalties but the closure of the site and the creators' intellectual property related to it.

Again, if anyone knows of a service with a large catalog that is free and allows for embedded tracks I would adore hearing of it. Thanks for your patience in this transition.

Those of you familiar with the glitterotica pantheon theory for the ancient elvhen gods likely have an image of Falon’Din built up in your heads. For some reason, he’s emerged as the bad boy of Arlathan, a combination of Alex from A Clockwork Orange and Harry Potter’s Voldemort—pointlessly, gleefully, viciously evil and over-the-top powerful.

Yet lore tells us of a softer side to Falon’Din, a deep and abiding friendship, a beautiful love for Dirthamin, his almost-brother and closest companion. What does a pair of gorgeous, morally bankrupt immortal men do? Apparently, in the case of Falon’Din, head canon insists he spends his time complaining about how amazing he is.

I know you’ve all heard someone while about how they’re so sexy or rich or smart that it’s all become so terribly dull,

I’ve been entertaining myself lately with songs that leap to mind during certain portions of Dragon Age: Inquisition even though they either contain too many anachronisms or just really don’t fit.  To that end, I thought I’d share a few of my head canon songs for entertainment purposes.

First, there’s Van Canto’s cover of Primo Victoria.  It has to be the cover because there are no electric guitars in Thedas.  There aren’t any Nazis, either, but at least we can get the music right if not the lyrics perfect.  If you can ignore the date of the D-Day invasion and hear “Nazi lines” and “Venatori” you might get a sense for why this one pops into my head.

Every time I’m getting ready to go to the Arbor Wilds and throw the weight of my epic army against the forces of evil (as in the Red Templars) I start hearing

I’ve written in a few places about how deeply The Head and the Heart’s Lost in My Mind moves me. Now that I’ve played Dragon Age: Inquisition it has a new layer of meaning for me. I picture Solas, humming this song as he’s painting the mural of your Inquisitor’s story. I imagine the lyrics running through his mind when he’s talking about or to the Dalish.

Most strongly, I want to see him singing this with Abelas, the perfectly pitched, civilized howl of loss and yearning and hope for moving forward. Solas sings the first two verses and Abelas the third then they burst the hearts of shemlen everywhere with the emotion of the chorus, sung together.

Excepting a minor anachronism the words fit beautifully for a pair of ancient elves embarking on a painful journey out of the past to which they’ve clung for so long.

We all know that, in the Dragon Age universe, Anders is not our tortured mage’s real name but a nickname based on his nationality. Whatever the powers-that-be at Bioware decide as far as accents go, the idea that people from the Anderfels have German accents has been bandied about the discussion forum and has stuck in my head as canon. Yet Anders does not have a German accent.

And thus, we come to the Pale Young Gentlemen and their song Fraulein. Despite the song title being a German word you’ll find no accent here, either. That’s rather too tenuous a connection to make this Anders’s theme song for the three years between Act 1 and Act 2, however. The secret lies in the lyrics.

If I could draw, I would make you a pretty picture. But I can't. And so I invite you, if you will, to picture Anders hanging out at The Hanged Man, watching Hawke and Isabela dancing on the tables. He’s been warning Hawke away from himself for a more than a year, now. This song is running through his head. He is, in fact, pining, as the chorus so clearly illustrates. The lyrics for the last verse of the song run thus:

Whenever I see Zinoodle's chibi Fenris dancing around the entry to his mansion this is what I hear in my head. He’s in pain, I tell you, and he’s trying to dance Hawke out of his system because she’s been flirting madly with Anders since he ran away that fateful night when their rivalmance brought him to her. So he sings this to Ander at the top of his lungs and the neighbors pretend like they can’t hear a thing because, well, he’s killed more than one guy right outside their front doors.

Chorus:
I see you walkin’ Darktown with the girl I love and I’m like
Fuck you (oo oo ooo)
I guess one night in her mansion wasn’t enough so I’m like
Fuck you and fuck her, too
If my will was stiffer I’d still be with her
Now ain’t that some shit? (Ain’t that some shit?)
But though there’s pain in my chest I still wish her the best with a
Fuck you (oo oo ooo)