The "Came for the Cullen..." quote is from me actually I guess I meant it; I'm still here 

I'm with Tish; my favorite is "Kitten Orphanage." Because I feel like that's who we are. We all have our different preferences; some play dwarfs, some play elves, some play boys, some play girls, some pro-chantry, some pro-mage, ALL LOVE CULLEN (haha well that part is true), some love Cass, some love Fenris, some love Alistair... but we're more than Cullen-lovers; we're BioWare fans and we're fun people and we love to chat about our favorite games. And we're cool and we're nice and we love each other just, I dunno. *puts on pink templar jacket* My fam!

By the way I am doing a canon playthrough (no romance mods) and I had to hit "x" to skip through all of Cullen's dialogue b/c I still have the mod installed and it was very, very tempting 

EDIT: Also something like "Kitten Orphanage" might sound less clique-ish and intimidating (since that has been a complaint in the past), like anybody can pop in and have a chat.

Both the diplo , we'll get you DOrian going "awww an unicorn!" a couple of time.

And when you're direct with him , I think it might get him a bit hot in the pants sometimes.

Ahaha thanks that's perfect!! I'm definitely more into "awww" than "hubba hubba!" so diplo it is

Will you guys entertain one last question/hurrah before it all ends?  

I'm starting (well, picking back up) a Dorian-mance, using a mage Lavellan. I can't decide on a personality. It's between "nice/gentle" and "aggressive/angry." (I think I'm not interested in the middle/snarky one b/c it's too much like Dorian). Which would you guys says works better with him?

Yeah, if we were to start something from scratch, I don't think I want to join in a let's squee and call ourselves 'cullenites' thread all over again. Looking at "the official cullen discussion" on readdragonagefans... hmm, not sure. 

 

If we do move to one of those sites, maybe we transition to some other identity. 

Yeah I don't really consider myself a Cullenite anymore, only in that I love the community itself and the wonderful people I've met and OF COURSE ALL THE MEMORIES

Primarily I'm a video game fan and a super BioWare fan I'm not sure I personally will navigate to a new forum. Like Solas sort of mentioned for their thread, a lack of trolls and an increase in overall kindness and generosity is more what I'm looking for, which is why I was more in favor of starting our own and being diligent about weeding out nasty individuals. If all the same people HERE (BSN) are just going to be navigating over to some other forum... well I haven't been to BSN in over a month anyway and I didn't miss it, other than just hanging out in this thread and chattin with y'all.

Plus Reddit isn't exactly a good hideout location... 

I'm not too familiar with it; I've only read the AMA threads. I don't like how it's so... dead lol Where are the cheery emoticons and avatars and sigs lol

Ugh, Reddit. 

Yeah that seems kind of condescending plus it's geared only towards romancers, whereas we are a general discussion group.

Seems like we're having trouble coming to a consensus. Should we list our options and take a vote?

1. Navigate to a new forum already created by other BSNers (list choices?)

2. Create our own forum and spread the word.

3. Head over to Reddit.

4. ???

Awesome!I have downloaded xkit but haven't figured out yet why I needed it, so thanks for this brief intro

No problem These are all the xkit add-ons I use:

1. Xinbox: Tags your responses with the asker's name so they'll get a notification. 

2. One-Click Postage: Among other things, turns the "reblog" button green so you know it was a successful reblog (good if your internet connection is crappy).

3. One-Click Reply: Lets you reply to notifications ("so-and-so liked your post" or "so-and-so is now following you" you can now reply "Thanks for the follow!" or whatever)

4. Tweaks: Wraps tags for easier reading; this is helpful as some people will put a whole conversation in their tags lol!

5. Auto Load Images: Not sure if this is necessary, but it used to be that some pictures would just be gray boxes and you'd have to click on them to view them. NO MORE!

6. Auto Tagger: Adds auto tags to certain posts. Everyone who queues posts uses this. (You will probably want to queue posts if you are posting a lot so people don't get spammed) Every time you select "queue" instead of "post now" you can have an auto-tag appear, such as "queued post" or something. 

7. Open in Tabs: Links will open in tabs instead of navigating away.

8. Outbox: Lets you save all your out-going messages (otherwise tumblr deletes them).

9. Quick Tags: MY FRIEND I COULD NOT LIVE WITHOUT. This is the tag bundle feature I mentioned earlier. Good if you post multiple fandoms and characters. For example, I have a tag bundle labeled "Hawris." Every time I click on it, it auto-tags a post: #hawris #m!hawris #dragon age #hawke #fenris. My aching fingers thank me.

10. Reblog As Text: Not sure if it's still needed, but used to be if you'd reblog text it would sometimes change to a link. No more.

11. Read Posts: Dims old posts. As you're scrolling through your wall you may start to wonder, wait, have I already seen this? This grays out posts you've already seen.

12. Read More Now: When someone inserts a "read now" it normally takes you back to their blog. This can be frustrating if that person has very tiny hard to read font on their blog. This add on lets you "read more" while staying on your dash.

13. Reblog Yourself: Very helpful if you create art or fanfiction. You may post something at 2am and realize no one probably saw it. Solution? Reblog it the next day during peak hours! Default tumblr won't let you do this.

14. Tag Viewer: Curious about how others tagged a post? Use this. Helpful when wanting to check all tags on an artwork or fiction you posted.

15. Timestamps: Puts the time something was posted next to the post. Helpful when you're trying to hurry through your dash and want to know if you're nearing the end haha

16. Blacklist: Everyone uses it. It's necessary for survival. Inevitably your friends have their own interests and may (gasp) post stuff you don't like. If they tag their stuff you can then blacklist those tags (aka #cullrian or #fenhawke if you don't like those pairings or maybe you just hate #merrill because you're a monster). Keeps friendships strong. Allows you to also block political stuff you don't want to deal with while browsing tumblr.

17. Anti-Capitalism: Tumblr recently introduced noisy ads that auto-play. Everyone freaked out. Xkit introduced Anti-Capitalism. WE LOVE XKIT.

Hey, I'm already on tumblr, so I'm trying multiple approaches (still lost btw)    Though  I honestly think that forum format is better suited for our needs. The pro of setting up a new forum is that it is in our hands and it won't cease to exist without some sort of control over it. Also, it will be smaller and tighter group (less drama?). The con is that we're becoming soo fragmented, and I actually like lots of peeps who were rarely (or never) on the Cullen boards.

Well I'm thinking if we did set up our own board everyone just invites whoever they want. It's not necessarily Cullen-oriented, more just BioWare / video games / fandom oriented. Obviously we would have discussion threads for various games and characters If you do check out some of the other boards people created you do tend to encounter some of the usual trolls. *shrugs* Some folks think those types of people funny but unfortunately I just find them offensive and it really ruins my whole day/mood when I encounter someone online making a "joke" about how women belong in the kitchen blah blah blah etc.

I'm following you on tumblr now Let me know if you need any help. I highly recommend getting xkit. Are you on FF or Chrome? With xkit you can: bundle tags (with the click of a button select a group of tags you made so that instead of having to manually type #cullen #cullen rutherford #dragon age #bioware each time you can get the whole group with one click), block tags (don't like cullrian? block the #cullrian tag; none of your dear cullrian-supporting friends will be the wiser), darken posts you've already seen (this is helpful when you follow lots of people and aren't on tumblr a whole lot), block noisy ads, respond to comments (you can comment on people's posts via the little chat bubble next to the reblog icon; unfortunately, without xkit, people can't respond to your comments), and so much more!

Thank you!!!

Moving is something to consider. We've done it before. To admittedly mixed results. I also don't know any of those sites. But if a lot of BSN goes... We could consider. An advantage of a whole new platform is that we can define ourselves by whatever criterion we want. Five years, 8000+ thread pages, 300k+ fanfic words later, I'm currently pretty talked out about Cullen. But not about dragon age. Or gaming. Or just chatting.

Other thoughts??

I love this. I mean I'm all about that "Came for the Cullen, stayed for the company" I say new forum. I do actually run a private writing forum with a friend so I have some experience. I'm all for setting up a forum and having a few of us be admins so the workload is shared. And by "few" I mean whoever wants to help. I have genuinely enjoyed my time here, obviously most so here in the Cullen thread. But there were some seriously rotten apples. I'd like to be part of a community that has all the good of the BSN and none of the nastiness.

This apparently is the parent company of the board I use: http://www.zifboards.com/

Is anyone interested? Should I set one up? Or would everyone simply prefer to migrate to one of the aforementioned boards already created by other BSN users?

It seems we've determined that non-forum outlets are a no-go (Twitter, Tumblr, etc.). 

Thanks I know that it may seemed weird, but this morning when I stumbled upon the news they are closing bsn, I kinda panicked a little like a fish out of water ^^'.

Yes I'm only a lurker, but there's no one next to me irl that's a gamer, let alone passionate about ME and DA series. Visiting this forum here, makes me feel less alone I guess

I know how you feel. I have met two people irl who play these games; one is a co-worker who is across campus that I never speak to and another is a co-worker's husband whom I've only met twice. And tbh I don't exactly feel comfortable going all fanderp on them and squealing over the games, so yeah... places like this are kind of a relief when you live in a gaming wasteland xD

No problem.

 

Everything is still hectic right now and it's uncertain where people will end up, but these are the first of more sites to be mentioned I'm sure.

 

Others are also suggesting:

 

http://vroomvroom.freeforums.net/

 

http://topshelfgaming.boards.net/

 

But there's even on-going talks about starting a new forum, so, yeah. It's all up in the air.

I've been at vroomvroom forums for a bit now and it seems pretty nice. Granted I've only been in the Dragon's Dogma thread

lol Well to all those who don't hate and despise me to my very being, my suggestion of a skype group or starting a chat/forum/group up somewhere else still stands. 

We used to have a Dragon's Dogma thread here on the BSN but the mods closed it and all other non-BioWare threads down, so we moved to another forum. It really worked out nicely.

I heard the news via The Keep forum (they send us emails; I'm sure lots of you are in that group, too... I don't really mess with it anymore) then also on Twitter.

WELL i might be the only person pleased to hear this because honestly these forums (with the exception of this thread and a few others) has become a grotesque cesspool of hatred and vitriol. They could not keep it up, and they could not seem to hire mods who knew what they were doing. (Yes I'm still bitter about being given a warning FOR NOTHING. And yes I kept my word and have not returned to this forum until today. ) Other than what occurred in this thread, mostly what this forum did was make me feel angry and defensive about characters/games I love (Fenris or Cullen getting sh!t on, Mass Effect 3 and DA2 getting sh!t on), hurt me to the point of tears, and offend me with racist / sexist / homophobic / bigoted rants and remarks to such a point that I have to not visit the forum for days at a time.

Nevertheless... I'll miss having this cozy corner of the internet to chat with like-minded folks I really enjoy tumblr if I'm honest; I had a tumblr way before joining BSN so I'm more comfortable with it than some, but so long as you have the xkit extension you can make tumblr work perfectly for you. Never ever on tumblr do I encounter harassment or gross insults, just lots of fans being silly, posting fan art/ fanfic and having fun. It's very simple to unfollow people who are awful and to simply "block" tags you don't like if your ACTUAL friends happen to post stuff you don't like (I tag all my posts so people can block things they don't like).

anyway, on tumblr I'm http://curiousartemis.tumblr.com/

On Origin i think I'm CuriousArtemis and same for Steam I think??? I have immense trouble getting people to find me on those platforms. If it helps, I know I'm Origin friends with Tish, R2, and morlenwen, so if you friend them you should be able to find me. (Did I forget anyone?)

On trillian (chat program which incorporates just about every other chat program) I'm curiousartemis.

What about a Skype chat group? I think my account name is artemis_moonsong. Either that or CuriousArtemis (can't figure out which is the name and which is the ID).

So can you guys believe I've been given a warning.

Someone had been starting a bunch of troll-ish posts in the MEA forums; I mean, this person had some ridiculous username that was obviously meant to mock feminism / LGBT / SJW / etc., they even had Anita Sarkeesian as their profile pic, and they repeatedly created threads where they pretended to put forth "innocent" requests that obviously meant to inflame the haters. All I did was point out that this person was likely a troll and that people should stop responding to their posts. So I wake up with a warning.

Me. The morons running this website gave ME a warning.

So at least for now I'm leaving the BSN; I am fed up with this website and the way it's being run. I don't really have anything else to contribute here anyway. I didn't care for DAI and frankly I feel there's nothing more to be said about Cullen. As for ME, it's literally impossible to find a thread where you can discuss the game with other excited fans. The forum is filled with gross, nasty, prejudiced, bigoted, racist, troll-ish a$$hats, but no, give me a warning. Great job.

The process of him figuring it out is fun to think about. In my head, he befriended a woman somehow (more like she saw he needed a little help in matters feminine and asserted herself--maybe it was Hawke!) and she insisted on him letting her style his hair. He liked the reaction he got from women around town (though he was still too shy to act on it) so much that he asked her to teach him how to do it himself--though he swears her to secrecy because he's so self-conscious about it. I should write a chapter in my long fic about him running out of hair grease and the mini panic that ensues before Leliana or Josephine steps up with some styling cream for him. All the blushing and stuttering... I die!

Aww that is cute I feel like I read or saw a fic/comic that had him running out of gel?? I'm sure it's been drawn before at least. Is styling your hair a feminine thing? I know some guys who are nuts about their hair and general bodily maintenance. Could just as easily been a fellow bro who helped him out

Well since I headcanon Cullen as being older than he is (35-40), I like to think that maybe he thought the curls made him look too boyish, and he was becoming self-conscious and worried that people wouldn't respect him as Meredith's stand-in and then the commander of the inquisition. So... bye-bye curls

That's too bad. The statues, the overgrowth, the weathered stone, the mazy layout, and the color palette worked really well in that regard to me.

Oh yeah I loved Ilos. I get chills every time it's time to go back there.

I didnt mean bad, I think the paragon/renegade options were most fun/best in ME2. 

However, the whole experience feels actiony, its hard to pinpoint, its a lot of things, from how your team mates yell amazing or whatever, whenever you score a headshot, to armor or lack of armor/helmets in space, and overall interraction. It felt like an action movie rather than a fight against impossible odds. In the entire ME2 I never felt like we couldnt make it. At the same time, I had a panic rush when first speaking to Sovereign in ME1, and he reveals that relays and everything else is left behind just to guide us along the paths they desire I just wanted to run out of that room and rush to the council
Silly, I know. 

Not silly! I see your point now. Yes there was a "can do" attitude to ME2. Shepard was all "FIGHT ME" to everyone lol Like I said, I feel that was kind of a result of being brought back to life and slowly realizing TIM is a load of horse crap. That final scene where you tell him to shove it so ME2. You don't get scenes like that in the other two. In those games, Shepard does seem to be rather harried. Maybe working for the Alliance just does that to a person.

Best ME2 moment: Shepard punches that guy through a window and watches as the guy falls to his death. Jack: (from behind) Damn, Shepard!

I thought it did the opposite, hence my problem. The boob plating looked much more prominent in ME2 and 3 than 1, to me.

Maybe so! Maybe I just noticed it more in ME1 since I had to dress my female squad mates.

(Usual 'all my own preferences' disclaimer, lest someone jump down my throat for the 'boob armour' comment.)

LOL! I will not jump down your throat but I will say the boob armor irritated me to no end and I was very happy to see it gradually diminish throughout the trilogy. I mean honestly if I'm a soldier the last thing I want is armor outlining my breasts... sorry, that's just not what I'm on the battlefield for.

Maybe I need to see some examples of how the tone was drastically different in ME2 than it was in ME and ME3. ME3 is certainly the most somber simply because the situation is just coming to a point and nobody knows if they're going to make it out of this alive. ME2, if anything, had a bit of a defiant edge; Shepard seemed to get renewed strength as s/he was slowly rebelling against TIM. I don't really see how it's lighter or more humorous... certainly walking through dead cities with that creepy music playing in the background can't be described as light. The death of Tali's father, the touchy encounter with the Virmire survivor, the introduction of the ardat-yakshi... I'm just not seeing it.

To me the tone is wonderfully consistent and I'm assuming/hoping MEA will follow suit. I expect to see a bit of hope and excitement injected into MEA that we didn't really see in the trilogy, which was understandably a bit more doom and gloom.

Only reason Morrigan was used instead of the more obvious Merrill is because Morrigan is a fan favorite and possibly a writer favorite, plus Merrill is from the much maligned DA2 as opposed to the god tier DAO.

Maybe something like the Toydarians in Star Wars...

*cough cough* Humankind...

Yeah I'm with you, OP; one thing that always bothered me about ME2 was how renegade Shepard was so SUPER DUPER PRO-HUMAN (and hence pro-Cerberus to a degree) and it's like, just because I want to play a really intense guy who prefers to punch his way out of situations doesn't mean I'm necessarily "human or bust!" And yes, as I played the trilogy for the millionth time, I did finally start to realize how silly it was that everything seemed to center on Earth in the last game, how all the other species were like, sure I'll abandon my planet to come save yours, Shepard! I find there's something really disturbing in this message; it's sort of a complete 180 from something like Star Trek which seeks to use "aliens" as basically examples of different cultures, and how we are strongest when we all work together... never in that series are humans shown to be better, smarter, more worthy of saving, etc. Mass Effect being so pro-human leaves an uncomfortable taste in my mouth, because there's no such thing as turians and krogans, but there is such a thing as German, Italian, Japanese, American, etc... ya know?

It would pay Bioware to consider what they did to earn the lack of respect they get now, and that showing a lack of respect towards fans in return is only making the situation worse. If things keep going at this rate, Bioware will eventually close down or fall into obscurity.

This is just so over the top, surely you can see that? Because they have some extremely obnoxious fans they are going to "fall into obscurity"? This is an immensely successful company that produces truly quality work and has hordes upon hordes of fans. And in what way did BioWare, I presume we are talking about the entire company here, from the writers to the artists to the programmers, do to earn the lack of respect they're getting now. Okay, I assume you agree that death threats are in a different category from "lack of respect" and so we'll not consider that caliber of insanity. But how are they disrespecting their fans? Every video I see of these guys and gals, every tweet, every appearance, is of enthusiastic people who are trying their damnedest to make an amazing game and, yeah, please their most devoted fans. If they fail at that, they do NOT deserve a lack of respect. They can lose the interest of their fans; they can potentially fail at writing and creating a great game. (This being a big if, considering the game DOES NOT COME OUT FOR ANOTHER YEAR; it's truly amazing the awesome powers of prediction some people in this form appear to have...) But this doesn't mean they should be disrespected in any way. 

I think people overreact to an incredible degree, and maybe that has to do with this particular set of folks, gamers in particular, I don't really know. I'm sort of narrowing my eyes at geek culture in general because this is where all the intense hatred seems to be coming from these days, whether it's from comic book fans, video game fans, or what have you.

Man, some of these losers (and this is going off entirely away from your post, sorry lol) are the first to accuse BioWare of catering and to accuse others of being "too sensitive" but damn if they aren't the most sensitive whiny set of little entitled b!tches I ever did see lol