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Once again thinking about that one concept art outfit he had. 🫣

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Here i dreamt i was …

Trying out a different sketching style because i suck at sketching so heres nap time Cole

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Its extremely bizarre how veilguard utterly ignores dalish elves, when the whole game is about their GODS coming back. E&G shouldnt even need to corrupt people, they would absolutely have countless dalish and elven slaves flocking to them if soley for the purpose of fucking up human shit.

You have innumerable tevinter slaves who wouldnt need any convincing to join them just to see the world burn after being abused all their life and seeing countless friends and family die at tevinter hands. How fucking morally interesting and heartwrenching would it be to have to fight freed slaves who willingly joined the gods because all this shit, lets burn this shit world down and all the shem with it.

You have so many dalish who have been waiting, PRAYING a day like this would come, a day their gods came to them and said now its time to take thedas back, to take their rightful place once more. To handwave it off as "oh the gods dont sctually care abt elves" is stupid and makes no sense. Theyre tryinf to amass a force to kill everyone, what do you mean they wouldnt cate about the tens of thousands of willing fighters they wouldnt even need to corrupt, in all corners of thedas. They'd use them just as any other tool or weapon at their disposal.

Also i can barely count the veil jumpers as dalish. Theyre not a single clan, they have no keepers, they dont act like dalish and neither does bellara. Ive never heard her mention her clan, her traditions beyond the veil jumpers. And to have the veil jumpers trust non elven, non dalish outsiders with their operations, their peoples deepest most sacret artifacts and secrets is BONKERS

Like dont get me started on how there is just no spirituality AT ALL in this game. The game about GODS. Nobody cares that the elven gods are REAL and the maker isnt. Theres a single scene about it and hardly any of your companions give a shit, because the writers forgot that most people of thedas are religious, andrastian specifically. Everyones just kinda agnostic or atheist now i fucking guess. Its not ljke there have been multiple crusades because of religion in thedas.

Whatever

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bioware since 2012: honestly we shouldn’t have redesigned the elves. from now on, regular faces for elves only

me:

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Idk how others in the fandom feel about this, but to me, Isabela's presence in Veilguard is frankly bizarre.

Isabela has wildly different endings in DA2, depending on Hawke's decisions and relationship with her. If you didn't form enough of a friendship or rivalry with her, she fucks off with the Tome of Koslun and never comes back. If Hawke decides not to defend her, she gets given up to the Arishok and Qunari. (It is implied she escapes regardless, but that's still a pretty significant thing to brush aside!) If Hawke romances Isabela and follows through on her quests, they stay together at least semi-permanently (barring whatever happens to Hawke in Inquisition).

Except, when you meet her in the Lords of Fortune - she can never mention any of that. She doesn't explain her new philosophy around the finding of cultural artefacts and how her Tome of Koslun debacle shaped that. She can never mention Hawke in any capacity, which is especially weird if your Hawke romanced her.

She does makes comments like "Kirkwall taught me a lot about family 😌" which makes 0 sense if your Isabela absolutely hightailed it out of Kirkwall or got thrown to the Qunari. What was the lesson she learnt, exactly? "I was right the whole time, fuck emotional vulnerability and fuck caring about anyone else?"

She's also one of the few characters who make an appearance other than the Inquisitor and Harding who has a close connection to Varric from previous games. You're telling me she has absolutely nothing to say about his death?

Her return strips her of any complexity and sidelines any of her past relationships because Veilguard just completely refuses to engage meaningfully with the stories before it.

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they stopped a whole ass blight. give them the griffon.

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ALISTAIR 💀💀💀

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do you guys think assan gets to sleep in davrin’s bed

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See the thing about Merrill my girl light of my life is that in the same way Fenris won't let you look away from slavery and Zevran won't let you look away from the dark side of the crows; Merrill WONT let you look away from the DALISH.

Like. There are some good moments with Davrin in particular talking about his clan, but there overshadowed by the apathy this game has about it's elven characters; theyre used mostly by the narrative as victims, except for when the narrative wants to try and force them to feel guilty about their gods being evil. And even when it tries to engage with the dalish, the dalish have to immediately decry their own myths and legends, they can't have a moment of sorrow or regret for its instead they're just like OUR EVIL GODS ARE BACK.

Merrill is a historian first and foremost. A keeper. She wouldn't look away from the evenarus, wouldn't bury her head in the sand and pretend they were good. But neither would she be able to NOT mourn for what they thought they had. I think Merrill wouldn't ultimately side with Solas but I DO think Merrill is in a position - seeing how both city elves and Dalish are treated - to genuinely want to burn it all down. This is the woman who saw the alienage for the first time and invoked the GOD OF VENGENCE. this is a woman who sees their past as key, remembers the bad and the good but who also CARES about her PEOPLE.

Merrill would have forced the camera back on the dalish and it would have been awesome

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They’re besties, your honor (they would be more in my ideal world where Sten was romanceable 😔)

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i will never shut up about the Titans. i will never shut up about these Lovecraftian horrors who sleep beneath their children. Whose blood shapes their entire way of life and stores the memories of every dwarf that has ever lived. Who still sing to their children, even if they can't hear them. Foaming at the mouth.

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One thing that immediately struck me about Veilguard is that you can't talk to NPCs. It's so jarring.

I just started replaying Origins and wow does it look ass, but when you leave your house in the alienage there are just some drunk guys you can have a conversation with. The shopkeeper shoos you out, but not before you have an opportunity to express the Warden's feelings on their marriage. Some woman is mad about your hot fiancé. Her son parrots his father's beliefs about lazy humans. A beggar bemoans being dependent on the handouts of people who themselves have nothing.

In Minrathous there is a single Shadow Dragon who introduces himself to you (you can't reply) and I'm going to be honest, it was comical to me how the game then had Rook act upset over his death.

If you want to get me emotionally invested, you'll need to give me more than "Hi, I'm Hector". I don't think that's a controversial opinion.

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A few people on TikTok recently tried to “call me out” over my frustration with Solas’ writing, specifically in the regret mural sequence. They claimed my issue was with the companions offering “a negative, bad-faith interpretation of my fave”. Let me be clear: they couldn’t be more wrong.

My frustration isn’t about the companions’ interpretation being negative; it’s that it was the only interpretation (And frankly my main issue is with how the memories were handled in the first place, but I’ll save it for another post). As I’ve emphasised before, Solas is walking duality—His narrative beautifully encapsulates the idea that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This complexity is what makes him such a polarizing character, sparking countless debates within the fandom. What I wanted to see in this sequence was a conflict of opinions and interpretations, something that reflects Solas’ layered moral ambiguity. And to clarify, I would have felt the same way if the scene had leaned exclusively toward positive, good-faith interpretations. Also, as I mentioned before I hate when the narrative tries to dictate how I should feel or think about a character, instead of allowing me to reach my own conclusions by offering me multiple perspectives.

As someone here already put it perfectly: Solas is both the Betrayer and the freedom fighter. My issue with his writing in DA:TV is that it solely focused on his role as the Betrayer while neglecting the freedom fighter aspect. However, if the reverse had been true, I would have disliked that just as much. Stripping away the morally grey elements that make him so compelling feels reductive in either case.

Also, can we talk about how the fandom often assumes all Solas fans or Solasmancers just want to “babify” him? Sure, there are fans who do—but it’s an unfair and bad-faith generalization. Many of us are drawn to him because we appreciate morally grey, complex characters. It’s not about excusing him or softening his edges; it’s about embracing the depth and conflict that make him fascinating.

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thinking about the potential parallels between the vallaslin removal- the way solas' hands stay so close and slow and gentle without ever touching lavellan's face- and any healing magic she might cast on him after the final battle. how her hands might follow a similar movement, taking care so as not to touch. how his bruises might fade in the same way her markings did. how they could erase the elven gods' cruelty from each other in that way- lavellan's binding and solas' pain- and how they are each the only one who could really do that for the other.

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the original crow (former), he has lied on his resume (lockpicking) he will seduce you

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And a Merrill too <3