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butchvamp · 4 months ago

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i dont know how you could play veilguard and genuinely think the dalish elves are represented well in that game. you can't even play a dalish rook (except somehow they kinda are dalish, but also you can make them andrastian too, because actually you're not dalish but you do know elven and call them "our gods" repeatedly for some reason but your faith is completely unshaken by all of this regardless), there are no dalish clans in the entire game, the only one we do interact with is massacred off-screen but it's fine this time i guess because at least it's not our fault, and the two dalish companions are treated like shit by the writers and the narrative and the playerbase. the veil jumpers are not the dalish, these are separate groups, there are humans and qunari and dwarves all within the veil jumpers. the dalish are separate, irelin and strife and bellara all left their clans to join the veil jumpers. the actual dalish clan in arlathan is killed after the gods escape, there's literally a whole quest where you have to run around and find their dead bodies.

bellara is punished not once but twice with her brother's death for daring to pursue elven history, just like merrill is punished for restoring the eluvian before her. and then rook is the one that gets to choose whether or not to destroy the archive, despite not even being dalish. yes, bellara is smart and strong and brave but she also is belittled for her beliefs; her struggle at the start is played as a joke, her comments are all punchlines, and when you do get to talk to her she blames herself and feels guilty, and the game gives you no real option to comfort her. it takes the game killing her brother a second time for us to finally get to see her practice her culture without feeling guilty and without being mocked for it at his funeral, because now she's learned her lesson (but also they make sure to throw in a comment about how Weird it is, and also that all the other dalish clans have been doing the Wrong funeral rites, just to make sure we know how silly they are)

outside of davrin and bellara, the dalish are absent. strife and irelin both immediately accept the sudden revelation that their gods are evil with no pushback (and i don't care if this is because they know harding and varric, this is not communicated in the game). and apparently every other dalish elf just accepts it, too. how is this not depicting them as a monolith? did we play different games? dalish clans have their own traditions and cultures and would absolutely have different opinions about their own gods; the only way you get to see something even remotely close to this is if you take bellara and davrin out together and listen for their banters-- which are never mentioned or relevant anywhere else in game.

and no, i don't want the dalish to blindly follow the gods in veilguard, i want the entire narrative to just not be so fucking racist. the oppressed people's gods being revealed to be evil all along is just racist. nothing else can be "fixed" while this is the core plot, and we knew this since trespasser came out, since it was first revealed over 10 years ago. people have been criticizing this choice and the depiction of the dalish for over a decade. and they still continued with this storyline, despite the various other lore bits they did end up changing for better or worse... instead they just wrote out the dalish completely while still managing to perpetuate harmful anti-indigenous tropes that they've been criticized for repeatedly in the past-- that are made even worse with the total absence of any other dalish characters to counteract them.

#like. what?#you guys are playing a different game than me i swear #sorry this post is kind of bitchy but im Tired of people being so purposefully obtuse about this subject #and just making shit up. its just racist! why are you trying so hard to defend it #why are you calling the people pointing out the racism... racist? and purposefully misconstruing the discussion?#why are you pretending like this stuff isn't literally in every game. this has been talked about so thoroughly at this point #if you arent seeing the issues with it i dont know how else to explain it anymore #da posting #critical #sorry i dont want to put this in the actual tag this is just a bitchy vent lmao

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bogos-bint3d · 2 months ago

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random thought bc i was making alphyne sims LOL, do you think undyne would ever want to have children? how do you think she’d be as a parent?

While I personally don't quite have a "definite yes" or "definite no" answer for this I personally think that, yeah, possibly! I think it's a question with a lot of layers to it, "is it something the character would want?" "Is it something the character should do?" "How much thought would the character put into it all beforehand?" "How long would the character wait before making that choice?" And first of all I think I should talk about fandom culture's view on kids in general. Why? Because I'm obsessed with validating my opinions like this

It's been said many times by many people now how there are a lot of times where fans end up writing completely out of character for the purpose of placing characters into positions of stereotypical familial structures- ESPECIALLY forcing women into the roles of motherhood where it doesnt fit or make sense for them to the point where I don't think I can really add anything substantial or important to the topic. The pros have very much said what needs to be said.

HOWEVER. I ALSO LIKE TO HAVE FUN WITH FUCKING CHARACTERS. I LIKE TO EXPLORE DIFFERENT TOPICS AND SITUATIONS WITH THEM. I WANT PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO SHAMELESSLY ENJOY THEIR RIGHT TO INTERPRET CHARACTERS WHERE THEY THINK NESCECARY. WHERE THEY THINK FUCKING FUN!!!

So with that said, while demeaning female characters to singular sad and one dimensionsional traits of "Mother" is very clearly to me Not A Good Thing, people should stop acting like it's a fucking sin to imagine the possibility of a character having a child while still retaining all their accurate attributes, because it is a very possible thing that can be and IS done!!!!!

What are my thoughts on Undyne with all this?

Hehhaahehehaa....... strap in.

Where do I BEGIN. How about the inspirations behind the character of undyne herself.

Ok so see this wonderful lass here. That's a sculpture by Chauncey Ives of the mythical water spirit, Undine. Thinking about it, you all probably know this anyway because I do fairly often reblog Undine themed stuff too. Because I'm just like this. But how about the interesting stuff?

The original myth, created by Paracelsus, an alchemist and philosopher born in the 1400s, I believe comes from his work "A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, And Kindered Spirits". I think that's what it was called. I'm too tired to talk fully about it specifically and we need to get to the point so have a video of some guy reading it here

youtube

Yay :]

It's pretty much what it says. Paracelsus essentially believed that elemental beings (whom he had adapted and reimagined from ancient or traditional at the time sources) were simply part of the strangeness of God's natural creation and should be studied, as part of appreciation of the Bible etc. And we know ALL ABOUTTTTT utdr and its biblical links/imagery. But back to undine :]

Paracelsus named his takes on the classic concept of elementals: gnomes for earth (YES HE INVENTED THE WORD GNOME!!!!!), sylphs for air (yeah he also invented the word sylph), salamanders for fire (he didn't invent that :[), and of COURSE! UNDINES FOR WATER! He believed undines to be fairly similar to humans, a significant difference being the lack of a soul. Which surely means nothing when talking about Souls Are Important the Video Game. And anyways according to him they were apparently fairly capable of getting a soul through love. Wikipedia also says that Paracelsus says that a child from this love will too have a soul which is nice

Blablabla Wikipedia says undines are like fucking desperate to get a husband or whatever but dudeeeee she can do whatever she fucking wantssssss. I think she can and should be enjoying her life with alphys rather than it being a thing just for a living soul or whatever. They're just happy, no mythology attached

Onto the most iconic interpretation of the myth, 1811s Undine by Friedrich De La Motte Fouque. When you think of the tale of Undine it's almost always that it's this specific story you pull from. Apart from another one I'll briefly touch on later (please hope it's brief). In it, Undine is a woman adopted by a fisherman, who was taken in by the fisherman after his own child died. Hmmmmm wow hmm sort of like how asgore took in undyne after his children died HM BACK ON TOPIC. Personality-wise, Undine is described by Wikipedia (because I don't have the book) as "erratic", and "capricious", which Google dictionary describes as "given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behaviour", which again sounds quite similar to the Undyne we all know and love.

It mentions that when married to Huldbrand (the main guy in the book he's not important tho) she is "kind and gentle" and yeah imo the writing with this IS kinda shit HOWEVER I think if were simply using this as inspiration for undyne I can definitely imagine her *eventually* becoming a calmer and more thoughtful person with A: the presence of someone like alphys to mutually love and understand her for her and B: the absence of having to worry about a war to fight and always sort of being on edge and just being. Like that. And again this would all be a *progressive experience*, rather than in the book where undine literally switches up over night. I do like to consider character and stuff

There's this line from the Wikipedia summary which jumpscared me

I 0% believe this has any significance to deltarune whatsoever however it was so funny out of context I had to add it

Another completely unrelated thing here but there's a fucking guy called "Kuhleborn" and I just. Can homestuck leave me alone. FOR FIVE MINUTES.

Sorry back to cherry picking the story to fit undyne.

Ok so truthfully I don't find anything else from that specific story that I find particularly helpful to undyne, the rest of it's kinda just useless to my point. Re-establishing the fact here that I skipped over a most of the actual significant parts of the story because I specificly want to talk about how I see it parallel to undyne. But that's it really. I just especially wanted to mention this adaptation of the story as it is pretty much the most iconic interpretation of the myth.

That is, interpretations that specifically refer to its source by name. Because by far the most well known media to draw influence from the myth of undine is the iconic Hans Christian Andersen fairytale, "The Little Mermaid". I don't have much to say on how the little mermaid does take much inspiration from undine, other than the way andersen himself interpreted the story. Simply, the fact that Hans Christian Andersen, a man who based this story off of his own feelings at the inability for another man to reciprocate feelings of romance for him, and resonated with the story of undine so much that it was a source of inspiration for the little mermaid itself is so crazy to me. Like. Here is a queer man who read the tale of Undine and understood it so much he wrote his own story inspired by it and made it tie in with his own experiences of homosexuality! Like that's so crazy to me! Because it just makes the undertale character of undyne being sapphic so much better to me! It took the sad story of gay tragedy and took it and made it a story of gay joy!!!!!!! We are all so happys forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok ummmm. I got carried away because we are steering very far away from what this post was originally about. Umm. Point is. Original story was of queer sadness but undertale is now of queer joy + the story of queer joy being based on story where being with this person who you really love and being truly and properly bonded in an undeniable and magical way is enough to give you a soul that will live forever. I think that's somewhere near the point I'm trying to make but at the same time it's not quite the point I was trying to make. And this is absolutely just one interpretation of one relationship and this is by no means in any way supposed to be the end all be all of what ANY relationship should be. I really don't think this is what the definition of love is. However for these characters I feel it can be a huge aspect of it for them

NOW FINALLY MOVING ON TO THE ACTUAL CHARACTER FROM UNDERTALE THANK FUCKING GOODNESS!!!!!

Oh undyne. With some of the implications in game that she lost her family, I very much imagine her being cautious with this sort of situation. Would she be able to handle is for example? Would she know what to do. Given its something she might not even have real first hand experience of, is it something she would even want to risk forcing upon another person? I think she struggles so much with responsibility as it is. She wants nothing more than to protect people and cheesus if she had a kid of her own you know she would be doing every single thing in her power to make sure that kid never has to face what she did. Undyne says at one point in game (if you kill her in neutral i believe) she never told alphys the way she felt because if/when she died in battle, she wouldn't want alphys to deal with that. And again, she really would not want to have a kid if she worries that one day that kid would have to worry about someone they truly care about not being with them anymore

So *would* she want them? I don't really think it would be an overwhelming innate desire or anything like that, but really not against it. Sged need a lot of time beforehand first. Some time to live her life to the fullest, time to make sure it's something she can handle without guilt, time to make sure it's something that does bring her joy. And then yeah, 6 or 7 years minimum I can see it happening. And I think it would be nice

"Now let's talk about susie, can we talk about susie? Please stun (and other readers) I've been dying to talk with you about susie all post, okay?" /ref

I don't really have anything to add I just think alphyne should adopt susie. In every timeline. Undertale deltarune I just think ok. Because she doesn't have a good home life to the point where she's like just Not Safe and hm young couple with no children in her area? Undyne would want to help her soooo bad because she understands just what it feels like to be young and alone not really cared for and she would NEED to fix it. That's defo how it is for undertale at LEAST. Idk entirely with dr if it'd be exactly like that cause we don't know what undynes got going down in dr yet.. but even so that's nothing to stop them

Anways yeah I think you mightve been waiting just a wee bit long for the answer to this ask I uhh.....m.....mmmm. yeah man I... yeah. I really do genuinely hope you enjoyed his tho cause uts currently quarter to 2 in the morning and I'm going on a train & to the aquarium tmrw so my ass CANNOT be waking up at 11 am again. Shits fucked. But when I tell you when I'm locked in on an undyne topic I AM LOCKED IN. IT TOOK A WHILE BUT I FINALLY DID IT. MORE THAN HALF OF THIS WAS WRITTEN WITH NO BREAKS OF CHECKS BUT THATS THE BEAUTY!!!!!! FLY MY SCARAB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#been thinking about this driving myself crazy over my answer to this ask for so long #the thing is while I put a lot of thought into it what if everyone else disagrees and ive commited a ''character misinterpretation''™️?#i like the idea of it‚ but I do also want to prove myself as undyne understander no1 and I do not think i would be able to handle myself if #-i lost that #and then theres questions like ''would this be something people want to see?'' ''is there a specific way it should be done?''#''would this be a choice thatd be good FOR the characters to make''#and again. i have put SO much thinking into this. but its in a way where ive thought about it so much that maybe no one would even understa #have i completely thrown away the original character aside in favour of something i think is ''right''?#ive heard it a few times that the concept of fan children arent good because uts just trying to put characters into a #''stereotypical perfect little societally correct family''which ABSOLUTELY makes sense to me #which is why i overthink so much about how i portray it all. so i can get it right #but what if even then im still wrong. or what if im just here thinking way too hard about having fun on the Internet. i wrote a lot here sr #asks #chat you dont want to know how long ive had this ask for........listen i have a lot of thoughts and it takes me a really long time2 share o #the more i like something the more care goes into it. care = time. i think ive had this ask for a year.#can you tell i went off the rails here #unaltered #shot dead #do i even dare main tag #we'll see how the post goes over and when ive given it some thought I'll either tag it or i wont ok goodnight ily all <333333333 #!!#undertale #bogos i binted #utdr #undyne #undyne undertale #undyne deltarune #undyne the undying #deltarune #undine

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