#ISMtext
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Veilguard vaguing:
It's not automatically a good thing, actually, that the game de-emphasizes or even outright removes racism against elves, and bigotry against other groups, from the story
#veilguard critical#completely declawing the sociopolitics of the story doesn't in any way make it a better story ugh#being of a certain race and even of a certain gender should mean something in the dragon age world and not all those things are good#and that's part of the challenge of the roleplay and part of the themes of the whole overarching story like#tevinter! is a location in this game!!#not to focus on just the elves but if we're not feeling the absolute depths and desperation of all the elves#not just the dailish#then there's no way to feel much complexity or conflict over - for example - what solas is trying to do and why he's so motivated#his character is boiled down to him being by himself and feeling conflicted over just his past actions#as if he didn't spend all of inquisition investigating yours and the companions' differing plights and worldviews#tbh though one of the biggest failings of inquisition is maybe possibly not highlighting the dailish and city elves enough#to help drive home this point - but veilguard is so clearly just kind of out here by itself with loredumping that goes completely#uninvestigated socially or politically that like... it doesn't matter much#like we just have to pretend that everyone is playing kumbaya now? with the elven god of rebellion real and running around?#that you can walk around anywhere in tevinter practically unbothered?#like bellara and davrin and every dailish elf in thedas aren't at all significantly moved by knowing their gods are just some guys?#i get more and more pissed at -good vibes- storytelling in all its mediums with every passing day#ISMtext
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also i think that justifying "magic systems" by claiming that they make it easier to avoid committing a faux pas in your own story, thus avoiding breaking the suspension of disbelief, simply reveals that there's too much emphasis being placed on mechanics rather than craft, and that the "magic system" is probably disjointed from theme and character and you're spilling all kinds of ink just trying and trying to argue for the existence of this worldbuilding on its own merits, because you're not using it to support character or conflict or setting or plot and vice versa. all this concern over avoiding deus ex machina is a nonissue because that is not the result of bad worldbuilding, it is the result of bad storycraft
also nothing breaks my suspension of disbelief faster than having a character infodump the carefully outlined rulebook of this rpg i am suddenly a part of in the middle of your high fantasy novel
#ISMtext#sorry for the salt today but people on the internet will just say anything huh#also saw a review on goodreads of a fantasy novel based around an ancient greek pantheon of gods and critiquing the “”“magic system”“”#and remembered a certain popular hard magic system author calling NK Jemisin's approach to fantasy “”“academic”“” while he smirked#because she knew the word “postmodern” and he didn't#we need to take back the fantasy genre i swear to god
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Anyway, that's enough real-life doom for this blog and I will be doing my best to think about literally anything else.
Arcane S2 Act 1 drops this weekend and I will be watching the second the eps are available, so I will be posting spoilers and screaming incoherently!
Tags will be: #arcane, #spoilers, #arcane spoilers, #arcane s2
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Ready for season 2 babes
#arcane#spoilers#arcane spoilers#arcane s2#I need like a whole separate bingo board just for Ambessa and Noxus#i had to include at least a couple gimmes here or else we all know i'm gonna have a blank board lol#when i say viktor laughs i mean maniacal MH laughter but i decided to cast a wide net#this board is doomed because of how bad i need mel and viktor to interact this season but shoot for the moon etc etc#i could've included the square where mel and MH lead the cult together like janna and a messiah but tbh that's for the fanfics#mage tank means i need a rain of bullets just rattling off the MH like he's iron man while he's casting spells but once again - wide net#will probably need to make yet another bingo board just for MH vs Jayce in act 3 or something i can feel it#UGH should've made a square for Kino mention#ISMtext
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elden ring is actually genius because it's one of the more recent works of fantasy i can think of that actively criticizes the very concept of a "hard" magic system that can explain everything versus a "soft" one that's fluid and explains nothing. a very GRRM-ish idea btw
the ruling world order is the Golden Order which is overseen by the Greater Will, the emissaries of which are (parts of) hands, old and withered, hands that direct the world and try to puppet the empyreans and make things work a certain way. turtle pope says that under the Golden Order, "all things can be conjoined." take any one thing in the world of elden ring and it can fit into the Golden Order
except again and again we find that the Golden Order is misguided, the Golden Order tries to pick and choose its rules and people suffer and things fall apart as a result, the Golden Order isn't even the original order that governed this world. there are Outer Gods we can't see meddling in the land that the Golden Order lore can't explain. you can try and try to hunt and mine all the lore you can, but there will always be things that don't fit into the Golden Order, things that can't be attributed to any Outer God we know of either. you find out that the Golden Order kicked out anyone it didn't like or didn't think "fit" but that doesn't mean they don't exist or don't matter, and they wind up having their own culture and their own "orders" that have all changed over the course of history. there has always been rules to the world but they can and have changed, shaped by politics and powerful individuals and collective movements. that's what keeps the rich tapestry of elden ring's fantasy world changing and evolving, and the rigid hand of some author is an intrusion upon that complex, diverse reality. we and the characters will never know it all, and nor should we
#ISMtext#elden ring#elden ring doesn't have to be a novel and it does not try to be and so that lets it express worldbuilding differently but like. yeah#we will never have the luxury of knowing the full reality of existence or the gods and i like it when fantasy contends with that as well#there isn't even one explainable truth to how DEATH works in elden ring like come on
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i think the phrase "magic system" should go away and be forgotten forever, actually
#this one phrase has done irreparable damage to the fantasy genre and the only elaboration i will make is that you can write a bad fantasy#with any kind of worldbuilding and aiming your worldbuilding to have -hard- or -soft- magic will not save it either way#now we have people who think they have a preference for one or the other which. you cannot convince me that that is a real thing#and authors are writing like it's a ttrpg and not a book#ISMtext
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Almost forgot: the state of the bingo board after Act 1!
I'm holding back on Mel's arcane powers because I wanna wait for the reveal, if there's gonna be one. And honestly, every time I remember that scene with Jayce and Viktor, I feel a little more sick to my stomach and DO wanna lie down. But I'm still gonna hold out for the next acts in hopes that I will be filling out this board through real tears lol
#i also might count Jayce holding Mel in episode 1 as a hug if she doesn't get a HUG hug by the end of the season but we'll see#ISMtext#arcane spoilers#spoilers
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so the simplest way to put why A Certain Male Fantasy Author bothers me so much is that you've got
(well-crafted) grimdark, which sees the real world for what it truly is, reflects it back at us larger-than-life (angsty) with morally grey characters
the classical example of LOTR, which (MOSTLY) sees the real world for what it truly is, reflects it back at us larger-than-life (hopeful) with heroes who choose good
and then A Certain Male Fantasy Author, who does not see the real world for what it truly is, reflects his flattened and twisted-around worldview back at us larger-than-life (if any part of this world or its characters exists outside of his conservative-leaning perceptions of how the world SHOULD work, then that is "evil") with heroes who are good, and their goodness comes from how correct they are in his definition of conformity. he never reflects upon this
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