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also!!! the way he looks at her!!!

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they rly got married

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:')

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daisy, older in bloom

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yeah i do think it really sucks actually that we finally get dwarf lore this game but it’s handled so poorly and completely at the expense of the elves. i also dont like that it flattens the dwarves & ignores what lore we have seen previously.

@ikarons pointed out to me that kal-sharok specifically is the thaig that destroyed the original cadash thaig for sheltering elves fleeing the tevinter emperium after the fall of artlathan (which is a huge glaring piece of information to exclude here). kal-sharok has both been previously abandoned to die by their own people and also committed horrific acts of violence and they are completely separate from orzammar (and resent them!) but this game presents the dwarves as this homogeneous entity that doesn’t hold any fault or complexity... we know there is a huge variation in dwarf culture and politics that just doesn't get acknowledged at all; they do them a huge disservice by focusing entirely on Harding and how special she is and how evil the evanuris are.

this was a real missed opportunity in my opinion to give more depth to both the evanuris and the dwarves, but we lose all of that in this game because people can only be good or bad and we can’t have any nuance, it was all the evanuris's fault and they did it just because they're so evil. and we'll blame the elves, too, while we're at it. sad!

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My thoughts on Dragon Age The Veilguard alternate between "It has a lot of flaws but it's still a nice game with a lot of well thought details" to "GOD THIS IS BAD"

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Solas, born to be a wife guy, forced to be an ancient elven trickster god by the narrative 😔

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hold on I was midway through typing out a joke post and it occurred to me that I think bioware conflates personal and societal narratives and this is one of the reasons veilguard in particular is so so weak - it is attempting to place the same emphasis on societal issues that it places on personal stories, rather than trying to tell personal stories through a social lens, and this is how we get lines like "maybe they're right not to trust us" and "why should [the race of enslaved people] get to thrive": there's an attempt to present personal opinions, which aren't always "correct" as representative of wider social feelings. bellara gets shunted into being the mouthpiece for the dalish, harding for the dwarves, and so you wind up with these characters expressing viewpoints that in a vacuum aren't the worst (not everyone is a monolith, characters can and should have their own opinions about the society they live in) but when put in the context of bioware's ongoing anti-indigenous trend result in this intensely preachy liberalism

@oscararcane and I were discussing this the other day but combined that with the fact that they writers here conflate "guilt" with "regret" - two separate themes - and the whole thing becomes a hideous tangled mess of misplaced blame and lack of accountability

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i already said it but it does really frustrate me how little agency Taash has and the more i think about it the more insidious it gets. again their entire story revolves around Rook making choices for them, and they're also consistently talked down to by other characters, even if those characters are depicted as being friendly or nice. Isabela treats them like a child despite Taash being a very accomplished dragon hunter with the lords (which we see, repeatedly, when fighting the blighted dragons! Taash is not a child), and of course there's their mother (at least this is intentional) and both her and Isabela go behind Taash's back to throw them in with Rook, without asking for their input. Isabela just assumes without even trying to discuss it with Taash separate from their mother, despite seemingly being aware of the two's strained relationship... and from there Isabela continues to make unnecessary comments to Taash whenever you visit the hall of valor with them.

even Flynn, the nonbinary grey warden you meet in the wetlands, condescends to them about the Qun when discussing their gender, and Taash isn't allowed to disagree with them (apparently they give Flynn a Look but ultimately don't press the issue) and Flynn is depicted as being helpful in this discussion. Rook lectures them about gender and their own culture; their entire narrative revolves around Other People telling them what to do and how to feel-- it's obviously meant to be Bad when Taash's mother does it, because she (the Qun) is oppressive, but otherwise the game seems to be fine when it's Rook or literally anyone else doing it, because we're the enlightened Good Guys, and Taash is just helpless and confused and so oppressed. of course, i don't think it's bad for Rook to discuss these things with Taash or give them gentle suggestions, and i don't even hate the potential gender discussion you can have with a trans Rook; and for the record, their mother does treat them poorly. but we can't ignore the way Taash's repeated infantilization culminates in the player being the one to choose their culture for them in the end, because..?

well, the game clearly doesn't think Taash is capable of doing it themselves. at one point Taash links the ropes they wear for the Qun to the ones the antaam used to tie down a dragon and "blight" them. even if i'm feeling gracious and say that Weekes really meant that womanhood & their mother's expectations are restricting, they actively chose to use the ropes of the Qun to make this comparison, and so are also implying here that their mother teaching them the Qun has tied them down and "blighted" them-- that the Qun has "infected" their thinking and is as bad as the blight (this is also implied in the previous discussion with Flynn). this is.... really racist. it takes Rook and their, again, "enlightened" (white) ideas about gender to get through to Taash, nevermind that the Qun has its own ideas around gender that just get shouted down or completely ignored. the racism here results in the narrative contradicting itself, considering one of the first things Taash says is "you don't get to tell me who i am" but... Rook does, in the end, because intentional or not the game is clearly convinced that a person like Taash needs someone from outside of their and their mother's culture (aka free of "blight") to come tell them what's best for them.... 🤔 hm! and while it's true you can choose for them to align with the qunari in the end, that doesn't mitigate all of the heinous and racist writing that leads up to that choice (and that the choice itself is racist. and you have to make it twice!)

of course we can say that Rook makes choices for all of the companions, this is true, but it's obvious that none of the other companions' choices are in the same ballpark, we aren't directly deciding something about their identity, and none of them lack agency to the same extent as Taash. we can even argue that they need Rook to explain gender to them, no one else ever has-- well, sure. the thing with Taash is that some parts of their story, when removed from context, are perfectly fine. i'm not criticizing the way Taash talks or acts or "does gender," all of which are things some people may connect to for various reasons (all of our experiences are different) but unfortunately we cannot discuss any of this without addressing the racism that is so thoroughly baked into every aspect of their character.

i criticized Taash for being "childlike" previously and that really wasn't the right phrasing-- i don't think that Taash themselves is childlike, it has nothing to do with them-- it's the way the narrative treats them, the way other characters talk down to them, how it takes away their autonomy & forces us to go along with it, and ultimately educate them and "save" them, and i think it's worth interrogating why Taash, of all the companions, is specifically depicted this way (it's racism).

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not to sound like a redditor but this game having incredibly laboured and poorly integrated gender politics while perpetuating the series' unbelievable racism is. woof

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she would love solas even as a spirit worm :,)

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solavellan commission

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me: i sure hope the crows are not gonna be solely depicted in veilguard as a brave force who 'fight for all' when they are at their core a criminal organization who is known to buy children to indoctrinate them and turn them into assassins, by putting them in overcrowded warehouses and making them fight for scrapes in order not to starve, to later torture those who reach adulthood to finish their initiations and kill them anyways if they dare to try getting out

bioware: i cooka da pizza

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ok ok listen. mythal and solas's fucked up relationship puts everything about solavellan into context. how hyper-aware he was of the unequal power dynamic in their relationship, his guilt over his own desire for her and how he pulls away every time, the overwhelming feeling of falling in love with a god(dess), he tells mythal "i would follow you anywhere" and if lavellan begs him in trespasser to let her follow he refuses her. "i would not have you see what i become" and "there is only death on this journey". he will not drag her into his mess the way mythal dragged him into hers. he will not pollute her from her purpose the way mythal polluted him. he will not allow her the guilt and blood on her hands because he was her. he has been in her exact position, yearning for a god's affections and willing to follow them anywhere. and he loves her too much to treat her the way he was treated. of course he cannot be with her. of course he has to leave her. and he can only allow her to join him when he is freed of his burden and his path changes to one of atonement. of course she can join him in his atonement, even if it is ugly. because it will not sully her hands with blood. he can only accept her love and support when he knows it will not come at the cost of her morality and the good person she is. everything he does to her, even the betrayal, is to avoid subjecting her to the exact same thing mythal subjected him to.

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may the dread wolf take you.

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—but you do not have to go alone.

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mirren lavellan u will always be famous