#Exploration Group

[tawnysoup]

Learning to accept support

[zan0tix]

My fav agents of the transsexual empire 🫶😁🏳️‍⚧️

I think personally we should draw them as adults getting to fully indulge in their teen fashion aspirations. (see second image) Callies outfit was inspired by paint splotches and embroidery as if she made her outfit herself :) A true artist!

Third is my updated readings. I say "readings" because i believe theres textual evidence for these and its how i interpreted them from my read throughs. (Only jake has the autism symbol because hes the most explicitly disabled coded in text but all of them to me are neurodivergent)

The gender labels are used loosely bc i think each of them has an incredibly unique journey/relationship with their gender that cant be encapsulated in a small set of words, and i do not think any of them would actually fully use labels either.

I am just using these to simplify down my thoughts into something easily digestible LOL MY THOUGHTS ON THEM AND THEIR PARALLELS + MIRRORS + INVERSIONS ARE SUPER COMPLEX i think about them Genuinely Literally Every Day of my Life. theyd have to be saved for a different time </3 but ya alpha kids trans 4EVER howd hussie cram THIS AMOUNT of queerness into these guys.. will never know

[lizzybeeee]

Calling it now:

If there's ever any future installments of Dragon Age there will be no mention of the differentiation between the Dalish or City Elves.

Like in DATV they will simply all be 'elves' and the vallaslin will be reduced to 'cool looking tattoo's that some veil jumpers have' - no mention of the elven pantheon either, because why bother! They're all dead now!

They're all dead and responsible for every lore plot point in Thedas, and there's nothing of mystery or substance left in the world now.

No mention of the culture in the alienage, of the vhenadahl tree, of the horrific racism and systematic abuse the elves have been through...now its just elves. With the way the Veil Jumpers have been set up, and the fact that the elven gods were the enemy in DATV, I find it extremely unlikely that the Dalish will even exist as a group either. Why would they? Their Gods returned and blighted the world - not that the fact is even truly discussed in the game. Elves are just elves, and the notable elves are Veil Jumpers.

Maybe you'll walk in a city, pick up a codex, and get a copy and pasted explanation of history from a DAO codex - a reminder of what we used to have and what BioWare absolutely demolished in their attempt to build a new IP on the bones of Dragon Age. The absolute whiplash in writing, story, and character between DAI and DATV is staggering. How on earth could the studio that made such a gorgeous, rich world of lore surrounding the elves in one game end up utterly bastardizing and reducing it to nothing?

How can you look at a place like the Temple of Mythal and go from those gorgeous golden murals and emerald tiled roofs that reached to the heavens to a place like the Lighthouse? From the Emerald Graves to the ruins of Arlathan - devoid of halls that reach to the heavens and golden murals replaced with stained glass? The entirety of the Trespasser DLC had more character and reverence for what the elven empire once was, and DATV feels as though it's approaching it with the perspective of 'generic elven bullshit with triangles everywhere'. All that unique architecture has been obliterated by adding in World of Warcraft focus crystals and automatons.

How can you go from the atmospheric/environmental storytelling of the Lost Temple of Dirthamen to Solas just blurting everything out? No weight, no double truths or hidden meanings - just blurting it out, getting it said and done with no gravitas? That was Solas' entire thing! People have made threads literally dissecting what Solas says and does not say - now he spits lore out as though it were common, everyday knowledge.

How can anyone justify the sudden emergence of magical automatons everywhere in old elven ruins? As if Dragon Age didn't have a host of enemies/creatures available to use in their stead - or the ability to create something unique to the forest of Arlathan. What happened to the spirit guardians? What happened to the lingering echoes of the elves slaughtered by humans in wars ages past like in DAO? Magic was their very existence - spells taking years or centuries to cast, weaving in and about each other - and you're telling me the ancient elves spent their time creating magical transformers?! It feels/looks so utterly seperate from everything we know of the elves from Dragon Age.

Or look at the Crossroads - listen to how Morrigan speaks of it - the reverence for the past, the misty atmosphere, and the heaviness of this pocket of the world that carries the fading memories of a world and people that no longer exists...now it's reduced to a hub world! People are just popping in and out of it at will!

In Trespasser, the few eluvians that we were available to travel to led to the most lonely, desolate spots of Thedas, which ensured their survival over the past millennia. The mirror in the Deep Roads, the mirror in the ancient stronghold in Ferelden...now they're everywhere!The 'few surviving' eluvians are in every major settlement of Thedas and all are in operating order! More than that, everyone who sees an eluvian knows what it is - this ancient marvel of a world long gone has lost all worth and is reduced to a 'world building' justification for fast travel.

Poor Merrill, slaving for a near decade to try and restore a small sliver of her history, only to have all gravitas and wonder of her discovery utterly made void. All that accomplishment wasted, especially when Bellara can wave her magic omni-tool and fix an eluvian in a matter of hours.

If you took every specific Dragon Age terminology out of the Veilguard and replaced it with generic fantasy bullshit you would never be able to tell the difference. The world of DATV is so divorced from its predecessors its astounding.

[bixels]

I'm not explaining why re-imagining characters as POC is not the same as white-washing, here of all places should fucking understand.

[jhonny]

STOP making kakyoin fight time-controlling superbeings, he is SICK of it

(part 1) (part 3)

[7cfc00]

Cast: Hermie the Unworthy as Theatre Kid with Identity Issues!

[spyres]

isat: explores the concept of found family outside of the expected nuclear family dynamic. goes even further by being explicitly against the idea of a found family always being nuclear, and shows this by having the characters cringe and express discomfort at the idea of being assigned specific roles. wants you to accept its found family being an amorphous blob

isat fans who don't understand themes outside of fandomized incorrect quote blogs: okay but what if odile was the mom friend and the rest of the group are her kids

[ao3-crack]

(x)

[hanbinos]

[pinetreeshack]

[grandquest]

Unfortunately, these two are very funny

[goldkirk]

I don’t know how to explain any more clearly that it doesn’t MATTER if it seems legitimate to you. You have got to fact check every single headline and post and claim on the left just like you need to do on the right.

The left is NOT immune to misinformation and rushed reporting. And the more emotionally polarizing or shocking the talking points, sound bytes, and headlines are, the worse it is and more frequently it happens.

Learn to verify through multiple independent sources. If you can’t do that, you can’t trust it.

If you have to wait extra hours for the real information to come through vetted channels—NOT just one individual somewhere everyone links to, and not just one single media source either, EVEN if it’s a major news network—thats just how it has to be. What news outside of genuine local disasters near you TRULY needs your outrage and post-sharing in the next hour specifically?

Misinformation works best by not seeming like misinformation and by fitting in with the rest of what you already expect to see. It doesn’t help anyone to not be able to recognize and avoid the stuff.

[task800]

this fandom pairs gavin and the rk900 dude like theres no tomorrow, which is lovely, follow ur bliss, happy for you. i want that same energy for north and kara. they are sampling from parallel water wells, they are running on similar batshit frequencies. north like 'what if we blow their ass up' (iconic of her) and kara like 'i'll run straight into high-velocity traffic man i'll fucking do it' (and then she did it) like these two women. repeatedly exposed to apathy, violence, cruelty. repeatedly wiped of their memories to keep them passive in the face of constant abuse. what if they met and held hands and raised alice to be their madmax pipe-bomb slinging baby . anyone.

[vanillapie-80]

Monkey grooming

[somegrumpynerd]

Part 1 of my au where Dream and Nightmare decide to finally try and reach a truce and stop their war

Next part

[greyncvember]

i got to class and my professor said "i have a meme i think you'll really like" and showed me this