#DA fandom critical

[nebulatheundead]

Aww, I remember the "straight male gamer"™ i.e. the self-appointed spokesperson for all straight male gamers. He was there to tell us how bad Dragon Age 2 is, because the men are gay and the women are exotic. How resources should have been used to create a whole new (straight) romance from scratch instead of making the existing ones bi, and all in all, how the Witcher, where you can only be a straight dude is a much better game.

Dragon Age has always been queer. Dragon Age has also always been "controversial" for it. The homophobes and transphobes now throwing a fit over The Veilguard's queer cast are no different than than the assholes who came before them.

[chanafehs]

The dragon age fandom is insane because I just saw a big-name fan who was anti-Palestinian in the past say that their heart goes out to me for the harassment I received. hello?

[cradlesinthesky]

The solrook VS solavellan shit is so fucking stupid

[inanshalla]

vivienne hate is so wild 😭

[heliomanteia]

When the universe wants to torture me it puts me right in the middle of the "we're either overly criticizing things that were not going to happen or overly praising things that are not reflected in the text in any way unless you ascribe to our specific and generous interpretation" fandom*

*this is real about each and every game, none of them are exceptions

[invinciblerodent]

Who's going to tell this person that "incurable" and "untreatable" are not synonyms.

Like I'm not looking to fight, that's why I cropped out the name and all the tags on this post, I just screengrabbed it and blocked them, but this is a quintessential post that really exemplifies the essence of the kind of criticism of any media that grinds my gears the most: which is when I see someone claim that their own misinterpretation of not even necessarily the text, but the English language itself, is what a plothole makes.

When someone hears a word, misunderstands it, and convinces themselves that their faulty understanding (which obviously isn't supported by the text, it's wrong after all) is correct, therefore it's the text that must be wrong.

You can treat the Blight. You have always been able to treat the Blight. There have been characters who were able to either mitigate the symptoms of the infection, or even prolong the life of an infected person who didn't go through the Joining by a pretty significant margin. Alexius semi-successfully treating Felix for months (if not years) is what comes to mind first, but there's also the mabari in the bloody first act of Origins if you want to discount that, and for some reason claim that that was "just Inquisition" changing the game or whatever.

And yes, it's an existing theory (one that I honestly kind of subscribe to myself) that since the other ingredients of the Joining draught are unknown, it's possible that via consuming the wilds flower, whatever was in it interacted with the Taint already in its blood, and the mabari essentially underwent a crude version of the Joining without anyone really knowing. But, and this is important,

the Joining itself is a way to treat the Blight!

Sure, it significantly extends the life of the person who undertook it- but it's made very explicit, from Origins onwards, that Wardens are still Blighted. Every time there is a Warden character, we are told, often explicitly, that they are not cured, that they will still ultimately succumb to the Taint, and that they're going to die from it. That's what the Calling is.

You can absolutely treat it. You just can't cure it.

You can manage, for a while. You can ease the pain, or push it back for years, if you have the skill, the resources, and maybe the love bordering on obsession that it takes, like Alexius did.

It's just inevitable. Be it three days, three years, or thirty, the Blight will stay within the infected, and ultimately kill them, no matter what- that's the fucking point. That's what changes in the end of Veilguard: that by eradicating the very source of the living Blight, by cutting it off at the roots, severing it from the thing that made it so potent and inevitable, it is finally cured.

We can argue about why Solas made no attempt to save that woman in the memory (maybe she was too far gone and he knew it, maybe he thought that ending her suffering was a greater kindness than prolonging it, maybe it would have been too risky to his own safety to treat her behind enemy lines, or maybe he thought that she had already served her purpose- maybe a combination of all, I mean none of those reasons are really out of character for him), but let's not fucking pretend that Flynn said anything shocking, or even out of the ordinary.

[dreamingofthewild]

There’s a popular sentiment circulating right now - that in a world riddled with anxiety and unrest, what we need most from our stories is comfort. That we should return to tales of clear-cut good and evil. That we need sanitised narratives, where the hero is obvious, the villain is irredeemable, and victory is inevitable.

I understand that impulse. I understand the yearning for stories where the world makes sense, where good always triumphs and the darkness never lingers too long. But as the real world has grown more complex, I’ve found myself drawn not to simplicity, but to its opposite. I don’t want to be comforted by stories that pretend things are easy.

In a time defined by division, outrage, and misinformation, moral complexity in storytelling is not edgy. It’s necessary. Everyone believes they are the hero of their own story. Most people act from a place of what they believe to be kindness or justice. And that’s exactly why simple good-versus-evil narratives fall short. They don’t prepare us for the reality we inhabit - a world where pain and compassion often coexist, where people do harm while believing they are doing good, where the truth isn’t always visible until it's too late.

People who don’t understand the world don’t think it needs to change. But stories - real stories - help us understand.

And when we understand, we act.

The best stories - especially the best video games - allow us to live through that complexity. They make us walk in someone else’s shoes, not just observe them. They let us feel regret, consequence, power, guilt, mercy, anger. They let us try to do the right thing and still get it wrong. And they teach us that even kindness has a cost.

I don’t want a game that assumes I’m the hero just because I showed up. I don't want a game that forces me to be a hero - I want to be a hero because I chose to be one. Because I was forced to be one. I want to get to decide what that means.

I want to become someone better, or worse, through the choices I make. I want to start out naïve, or broken, or selfish, and let the story shape me. I want mercy to backfire. I want to spare someone and be hated for it - by my companions, by the world, even by myself. I want to try to be kind and have it blow up in my face because what I thought was kind, wasn’t - or because they were going to hate me either way. I want the story to let me fail.

I want companions who don’t always agree with me. Who argue. Who push back. Who make me doubt myself. Who might even leave. Or worse - who stay, and resent me. I don’t want a team of people who like me because I pressed the right dialogue button - or because they are programmed to like me no matter what. I want people with their own beliefs and values, who love me in spite of me, or who stand beside me not out of friendship, but necessity. I want companions who feel real - not like characters in a video game. Let me change them and they change me. For better or for worse.

Let me love someone I can’t stand. Let me stand beside someone who betrayed me, because the stakes are bigger than my feelings. Let loyalty come from survival, not approval. Let alliances be built on desperation, not harmony.

This, to me, is what builds empathy. Not through lectures or moral checklists - but through emotional friction. Through difficult choices. Through perspectives I don't share, but come to understand. That’s where real connection lives. That’s where compassion is born: not in comfort, but in discomfort. In sitting with grief, guilt, fear, and choosing to act anyway.

Maybe I feel this way because I was sheltered. Because I grew up idealistic and naïve. Maybe I crave discomfort now because I need it - because discomfort teaches. Because you don’t grow empathy by being told something is wrong. You grow it by feeling it. By failing. By hurting someone and realising you could have done better. By walking through someone else’s pain and thinking, “I get it now.”

That’s the kind of story I want. Not one where I’m always right. Not one where the world is beautiful and safe and waiting to be saved. But one where I don’t know if I’m making the right call, and where even the right one leaves a scar.

I want villains who aren’t monsters. I want antagonists who think they’re doing the right thing - not cartoon villains. I want characters who cling to broken institutions because it’s all they’ve ever known. Who still believe in their gods even after learning the gods are monstrous. Who join the enemy not out of greed, but because they were lied to - and they believed it. Because they thought they were saving the world. I want to be able to redeem them - or defeat them - or become them.

Sometimes, doing “bad” things in games is therapeutic. Not because I enjoy cruelty, but because I need to feel powerful when I am not. Because rage needs a shape, grief needs a voice, and walking a mile in someone else's pain is the only way to truly understand them. Video games are a good way to explore things you can't in real life.

I want to see myself in the villain. I want to look at them and think, If I had just been angrier, or more desperate, or more alone - that could’ve been me. I want heroes who are doubted. Who doubt themselves. Because no one should be beyond criticism. No one should be infallible.

And I want the narrative to reflect that. I want it to punish me when I act with hubris. I want to lose something I care about because I was too soft - or too cruel. I want the world to respond. I want it to push back. I want the story to bleed. I want stories were empathy and kindness are sometimes not enough. Where the villain doesn't lack these things. Where the lines blur and I can only believe in myself - on each individual.

I want to make mistakes and then reload because I feel bad.

That’s why Veilguard feels so jarring to me.

Not because of the art style. Not because I hate colour, or humour, or fun. But because it feels safe. It feels like a product built to be loved. It looks like a game that wants to protect me from consequences. That wants me to feel heroic, rather than become someone worth following. That wants to hand me hope, instead of making me fight for it.

And that kind of hope doesn’t mean anything to me.

Hope, to me, isn’t clean. It’s not the triumph of good over evil. It’s not a shining sword or a perfect ending. It’s what grows in the wreckage. It’s what drives people who hate each other to stand side by side against a greater threat. It’s the choice to act even when there’s no guarantee of victory. It’s the belief that change is possible - not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary.

True hope costs something. It means sacrifice. It means compromise. It means getting blood on your hands for the sake of something bigger. Sometimes “whatever it takes” means setting aside your pain, your justice, your morals, because the world is burning and there is no time left to argue about it.

Because in the real world, there are no superheroes coming to fix this. There’s only us - flawed, frightened, desperate humans trying to do better. And the only way forward is together. Through disagreement. Through pain. Through complexity.

Some people find hope in soft light. I find mine in the ashes. Dug out from grief. From desperation. From doing what shouldn’t have been necessary- but was. You can’t tear out rot without pulling up the roots. Change doesn’t come clean. It wrecks things. It should.

Stories like that don’t comfort me. They remind me that I’m not alone. They show me the ugliness of the world, and still find meaning in it. They don’t promise everything will be okay - they remind me it’s worth trying anyway.

I want a story that scars me. That shakes me. That makes me think, feel, change.

I don’t want to win without cost.

I want kindness that hurts.

Justice that divides.

Love that outlives betrayal.

Rage that reveals what matters.

I want the freedom to fail — and the strength to get back up.

Don’t give me a perfect world.

Give me one I have to bleed for.

One I can scream at, argue with, grieve over, fight for.

One that doesn’t assume I’m good - but lets me try to be.

So no- I don’t think it’s edgy to want moral nuance and I don't think that complexity is antithetical to kindes and compassion. I think it’s necessary. I think it’s hopeful. Because if stories can show us why people hurt each other, they can also show us how we heal. If they can reveal what divides us, they can also show us what connects us.

Empathy and kindness come from understanding and they don't exist without dispair. Complexity is balance - harmony.

[fangatic]

just saw a post about mythal that made it insanely hard and difficult to block and scroll on without engaging holy shit

[sha-lyuzar]

"You're just mad it's not like origins"

Yeah, how dare i be disappointed in a game series that has followed a certain tone and theme for three games, and has always been narratively complex, and about navigating hard decisions and moral dilemmas, structual injustices, deep characterisations, beauty and tragedy in tandem, rich worldstates and character arcs and thin lines between heros and villains... it's almost as if my disappointment stems from care and passion for dragon age, and not from an unwillingness to accept change, or a misplaced sense of nostalgia. It's almost as if people are allowed to criticise a thing and discuss its flaws, while also enjoying other aspects of it, and voicing their opinions on the world's most unprofitable social network to a handfull of followers and mutuals, isn't going to make any meaningful dent in the game's success

[sweetladyjustice]

*sigh* thanks to fandom abuse, one of the Veilguard storyboard artists is hesitant to share his work.

Anyway, go check out Nick’s art.

[mortalitasiquyen]

That AI art of emmrich smoking a bong makes me so mad for one very specific reason. I have seen SEVERAL requests for art within the DA fandom get fulfilled just by asking. Like people asking “Hey artists of tumblr, can someone render Lucanis in this exact pose?” Or “Hey can someone draw Illario wearing -this-?” And both times several artists step up to the plate and make that art for free, for fun, because that is what community is all about in fandom.

You have a world of artists willing to draw at your disposal (you don’t even have to commission them) and yet STILL you chose to disrespect artists and use a machine that steals art, hours of hard work.

Had you asked “hey can someone draw emmrich with a bong and a skull smoke cloud coming out”, I guarantee you would’ve gotten several works of art in return, from actual artists.

You don’t have to steal from them. You don’t have to use technology that steals from them. You can go straight to them and ask.

[sh00kspeared]

Genuine question for the DAI fandom — is there a decent community surrounding mlm solavellan? I just got into DAI and am using the equal opportunity mod to romance solas, but some of the things I’ve seen people online just made my heart sink— that they’re ‘so, so glad solas is straight’, the way that people pelt mlm solavellan shippers with downvotes and dislikes, the way I saw someone say that hetero people might feel ridiculed by Solas being bisexual. I’d love to find my people, and I’m just wondering if things are any different here on tumblr or if the fandom is in general agreement that bi solas = bad.

[invinciblerodent]

Ngl, some people's "I wasn't allowed to be an irredeemably evil shitbird, ergo Veilguard is not an RPG" argument is extra funny to me, because I don't actually think there is a conceivable narrative in which, if your Rook did something as objectively amoral as selling people into slavery, they wouldn't wake up the next morning floating untethered in the raw Fade with Neve's bootprint on their ass, and the Lighthouse no more than a distant blip on the edge of their vision.

Like there is a lot to get into here that I just don't have the time or the spoons to go through, but I'd argue that one of the biggest strengths of Veilguard's writing is that the main cast are all very well-defined characters with their own sets of morals, ethics, and goals, and they collectively have more than enough of a backbone that if Rook did something that proved them incapable of leading the team to the story's climax and/or proved them to be of no benefit to them, they wouldn't fail their quest: they would just swiftly and efficiently get rid of Rook.

[samsincerely]

There’s this one streamer who keeps talking about how veilguard has the “cringiest dialogue” and ngl it pisses me off. Idk who she is but she pops up on insta a lot for me and I just get so sick of this idea of pretentiously calling things cringe to discredit it but especially in this context for a few reasons.

I think a better word is perhaps awkward but this implies that it was written awkwardly but I think the writing is very intentional.

The only companions I would say sound awkward at times are Bellara, Taash, and Harding.

Emmrich always sounds composed and well spoken. Makes sense with his experience and confidence.

Davrin sounds a bit harsh at times but purposeful and passionate. He’s also very sure of himself and a man of action.

Neve also sounds thoughtful, intelligent, and sure of herself. She’s a questioner but analytical.

Lucanis is actually quieter but he’s intentional and most of his dialogue reflects his sharp focus on his hyper fixation job.

So why do the other three sometimes come off awkward? Well I think it’s very intentional in the characterization.

Harding is pretty unsure where she fits in with everything. She’s used to being a background character to Inky, Varric, and co but now she’s at the forefront of stopping the apocalypse and she’s got this new dwarf magic that shouldn’t even exist. And she’s a surface dwarf raised around humans. She doesn’t really come into her own until you resolve her personal quest where she really decides who she wants to be and how to honor what got her there.

Taash comes off brutish and rude in some cases. It’s clear that they’re so divided in their identity and insecure about themselves that they lash out at others. Taash says they want to join the team but the decision was made for them by their mother so they act out. Taash has been simultaneously babied and unsupported. Figuring themselves out also shows immense growth in how they interact with people.

And sweet Bellara. Girl lives in the woods and hyper fixates on ancient elven magic and works for at least a week at a time, alone. She doesn’t get much social interaction so while she’s not necessarily insecure she doesn’t second guess herself a lot in social situations because it’s not her expertise like magic and elven culture is. So yeah she should be awkward.

I just think the writing and voice acting of Veilguard shows so much love and respect for different kinds of people. It takes such a positive stance in such a scary time. I love it and haters should just say it’s not for them and move on instead of disparaging.

[thestolenthrone-archive]

PSA: DA Fandom art theft

If you are a victim of thestolenthrone/lady--lucrezia art theft on tumblr you should fill in the DMCA takedown request available here: https://www.tumblr.com/dmca. Art theft is considered copyright infringement, and there should be no space for art thieves in the fandom. From the Tumblr User Guidelines:

[postcardsfromheapside]

Okay. Listen. I'm only going to engage with this in good faith once.

Veilguard was never going to be like BG3.

BG3 is a great game for what it is, but no DA game allows you to pick the evil ending, thus there is no reason to allow you to get rid of companions in VG like in BG3 or in previous DA games.

In prior games, you may have been able to eliminate other companions from your team, or not recruit them altogether, because they were not crucial to the overall goal, and all you would miss is story/lore. Nothing breaks in the story/game if those companions leave/are killed/don't get recruited, it merely pivots.

This is completely different in Veilguard, where Varric has taken knowledge and insight and started to develop a specific strike team to take down Solas.

Hold my hand.

There is not a world where the Veil comes down and things "continue". I know a lot of Solas fans think there is...but there isn't. A robust explanation of why the Veil should NOT come down can be found here.

If the Veil comes down, everything ends. Ignoring the real world happenings at EA, if your end worldstate in VG is "world drowned in demons," there's nothing to move on to. No reason to play another DA game, were we to ever have another. Your world state is "game over."

Rook therefore *must* be the cooperative kind of person who is ultimately working toward keeping the Veil up, whatever the cost. It would really help a LOT of you to stop thinking about Rook as a "hero", and start thinking of them more as a project manager.

Remember, Varric already had the goal of "stop Solas" and specifically recruited Rook because they had qualities best suited to help with that, and Rook agreed because "world drowned in demons" is bad. So when Rook inherits the management position from Varric, they come pre-loaded with 1) a goal, and 2) the mindset to get it the fuck done (because there really is no other option, it's succeed or die, a fact mentioned more than once in dialogue with NPC's).

What Rook builds by bringing on team members is a strike force in order to achieve this goal. And here's my point: if you do not have these necessary companions, you do not make it to end game. The way the story is set up, removing any of the companions before Tearstone Island effectively sets the team up to fail horribly. The story doesn't move forward. The world is blighted. End series. Rook is highly motivated to be cooperative with these companions and their factions.

This is why it's a poor excuse to say that it would "add narrative tension" if Rook were able to be mean to their companions and risk losing them. Nothing is added narratively by a companion leaving. If they leave, at some point shortly after The Leaving, the story will end abruptly in Blight.

Rook is therefore not going to do things to cause the companions to leave, because their goal is "stop Solas/stop the gods/stop the blight" and to do that, Rook needs these people. Now, you can make the choice not to do the faction or personal quests along the way toward that goal, and ultimately those companions might fall in the final battle, but the story is not going to let you remove those companions before then. Because the story is not about a choice between "Veil-falling/World-blighted, or Rook being a hero." The story is many things ON THE WAY to stopping the the Veil from falling, one way or another.

Now, I know a lot of these "I wish we could be meaner" comments 99.9% of the time come about because people do not like particular companions, so this was all probably a waste of typing. And my answer to "I just don't like this person" is "too fucking bad, I don't like all my coworkers either, try growing up" or "maybe you should try not being a bigot," depending on the way the "I don't like this person" is phrased. But I also think some of you just really do not understand how story/games structure works, and you're familiar with very specific kinds of media, and it's upsetting you to have to wrap your mind around something new.

If you REALLY want to explore a blighted world, that's what fanfiction is for. Go bug nuts. I don't think it's going to be a compelling story, but you might surprise me.

Also, while we're talking about "tension":

I'm begging you to consider that one of the greater sources of tension can arise because you, the player, are literally watching a tragedy unfold. You cannot stop it, you know what's going to happen, you know what choices you're going to have to make, and you have to make them anyway, and they're going to hurt you in some way or another, and you, the player/reader, know what the characters do not. The tension comes from watching the different permutations of grief unfold across the screen and inside of you. None of the companions have to be in conflict with each other in order for this to happen.