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what veilguard is doing with the theme of grief... man. dragon age has always been, one way or another, about grief. how you can never go back. how you could go back, but it will never be the same. you must learn to be-with (in the heideggeran sense, as in "each one exists in a world saturated with others linked through shared social practices") grief in order to make it out alive.

as the warden, you lose everything you ever knew before: your family, your home, your friends, everything. it is all still there–except, maybe for cousland and aeducan–but you can never return to it. not as you were, and not as it was. you have been changed, and your past has changed with you.

as hawke, you are a refugeee. your very name is synonymous with grief. you claw your way out of a dying country only to find a dying city instead. all of your friends should be dead but aren't. you should be dead but aren't. whatever you do, you will fail. there is no returning to ferelden. there is no saving kirkwall.

with inquisition, because your character backstory is so much less defined (in-game, at least), the theme of grief is expanded towards the rest of the world. the theme shifts from being personal to global, the grief theme becoming intertwined with greater, historical questions. what does it mean to grieve empire? what does it mean to grieve a system that was, even if it hurt so many?

and, from what i've seen so far, veilguard is bringing that theme forward and honing it into a thematic spear. every quest, every companion, every npc story you follow. all of it is building together to try and answer the questions the previous three games have been asking:

can you go back? should you go back? is it healthy to want to go back? what can you do, when "back" is gone, a dream from a lifetime, a memory, a thousand years ago?

your brother is dead. can you mourn him? your grandmother is dead. can you mourn her? your mother is a refugee who did the best she could and it still wasn't enough. can you mourn what could have been? can you mourn your city? your purpose, when all you were was built to die and you didn't? can you face death singing? you have to. the blight can be soothed but not beaten. the veil cannot be taken back, a thousand years of elven deaths and mage deaths cannot be taken back. there is no other way but through.

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I have my gripes about DAV. But I love this game and I will continue loving DA even if they never make another. I will build a story around the world I have come to love.

Characters who saved me in my darkest time. Fictional friends I love as much as some real friends I've made.

I do want to shoutout the Veilguard team for giving us such a beautiful piece of art in what had to be the worst of circumstances. The game’s industry is in a bad way and has been for a long time. We are seeing what happens when you commodify artistry and unfortunately it’s not unique to gaming. The fandom consuming media quickly and greedily with no regard for the creators are just as susceptible to this attitude as the developers and that’s something we all have to reckon with. I’ll be honest I’m surprised we even got Veilguard at all.

Which is why I praise this game as hard as I do. They stood by marginalized fans harder than ever. They made a lore accurate game. They made something that ties so many more lore threads together and gave us more to chew on. They gave us wonderfully written story about processing trauma and letting go of regret. It’s gorgeous and fun to play. It has my favorite protagonist and my favorite group of companions. My favorite romances too.

If I’m not gonna let the broader fandom tell me how to enjoy Dragon Age, I’m sure not going to let corporations tell me how either. I will continue to support fanworks however I can. Not to mention write my own.

Whatever else happens I have four Dragon Age games that I love and a lot of cool friends in the fandom I’ve connected with. I’m writing again. That wouldn’t have happened without Veilguard and as a long-time fan, I know I’m sticking around. I’m not interested in an autopsy of something that isn’t dead yet.

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Since apparently Rook is sensitive to Gingerwort Truffles I had to add that of course Abel drank alcohol with it and of course he was tanked.

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how dare, Lucanis!!

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what if we all sang 'the dawn will come.'

i mean it can't make anything worse.

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Sheryl Chee (Harding's writer) on the state of things

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Back in the way back. I bought a PS3 specifically to play the latest God of War game- because GoW got me into gaming.

Then I suddenly had a $600 console and only one game. I wandered into a Game Stop, there on the TV an ad for an upcoming fantasy RPG was playing. Dragons, magic, fighting. I pre-ordered a copy without knowing anything else about it.

I have never looked back. DA opened the door for hundreds of hours of new games. And I have pre-ordered every new title as the drop. I will never stop buying DA titles until they stop making them.... Or makes them pay-to-play nonsense.

GoW introduced me to gaming, DA made me stay. 🥰

Reblog if you have no intention of leaving the Bioware fandom anytime soon

With the release of the final Dragon Age Inquisition DLC and Andromeda a long way off, interest will decline of course. But if you’re in this for the long haul, stick this on your blog.

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You can also add

-ai

Before or after your search and it will remove all AI results ❤️ adding a - before any term will remove it from your search results and adding "" around something will prioritize that term

So

-ai best time to plant "tomatoes"

will give you no ai search and prioritize articles about tomatoes specifically 🥰

every time I do a web search, right at the top I have AI info dumping on me

just give me the top result please

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I love it. And I will continue playing it forever.

1.5 million haters can pry DATV from my cold dead hands. If that makes me dumb and illiterate then so be it

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“Bound by duty; chased by the past”

a little da tarot card for my Crow!Rook Callistos

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shadow dragon to shadow dragon communication

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Hi. Please. I will crawl through glass for this.

WHAT IF Lucanis wasn't the only one captured by Zara and the venetori. What if someone else was kept there in the Ossuary, someone part of a different experiment. Being tortured, fed the blood (or, well, ichor) of hunger demons. Had their teeth ripped out and replaced with fade-touched silverite fangs, nails swapped with fangs, made to feed and hunger until they started craving blood. What if the two of them only saw each other in passing, but were tortured by (in addition to the rest of the torture) being forced to hear each others screams and shrieks of pain.

What if they tried to escape together. Fighting to take down those who broke them, by using what they were forced to become. What if there was no veilguard or excaped gods, only the two of them fighting to take their lives back and seek revenge.

What if I wrote a dark sort-of vampire AU. Called Blood and Spite.

What if I did that.

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