#Jewish elves

[vigilskept]

gnashing my teeth thinking about how veilguard talks about the gods only as a joke when they could've gone somewhere truly crazy.... you're so right.

Yeah... you get it. It's just such a missed opportunity!

I don't even mind the jokey tone they use a lot of the time, because we all joke about things we struggle to understand/cope with.

Except Veilguard refuses to let you even try to broach the subject beyond that surface level. In fact, when it does let you engage with it at all, it manages to make things even less nuanced!

I'm just going to talk about Bellara's quest here since it's the most directly linked with the elven gods, and it's already a lot. Fundamentally, her companion quest is asking us two things:

Should elves be blamed for the actions of the Evanuris?

Should they preserve any of their past at all?

The first one is absurd to even begin with. It's not even a good or interesting take on the (very christian!) question: "Are we responsible for the sins of our ancestors?"

The Evanuris are not the ancestors of modern elves. Dalish religion implies that modern elves descend from those who the rebels never freed from slavery to the Evanuris.

This setup is already awful without looking at any of the parallels Bioware has (intentionally) drawn between the elves of Thedas and Jewish/Indigenous people. I have to put the rest of this under the cut because I genuinely don't think it can be shortened without making it sound flippant. In the context of the coding of the elves, the theological/social implications of all of this are so much worse.

TLDR: the indigenous/jewish coding of the elves makes bioware's treatment of elven religion in veilguard thoughtless at best, cruel at worst. they did not have to write themselves into this corner. there was a way of handling this lore reveal without the implication of elven religion (again, jewish/indigenous coded) being obsolete

So, the religion of the Dalish was part of their enslavement. It's the belief they were forced into by the cruel gods they are still devoted to. That's already pretty bad. How could it get worse, you might wonder?

Whether Bioware deviated from their initial inspirations for the elves or not, the implications for these lore reveals in light of those parallels are particularly cruel. Those two core questions in Bellara's quest? Yeah. Those have both been levied against the oppressed groups that Bioware chose to draw inspiration from. Both historically and presently. To justify atrocities against them.

And to be clear, Bioware does not deviate from or subvert the usual indigeous and jewish-coding of the elves in their writing here. If anything, they end up actively endorsing a very significant element of antisemitic and anti-indigenous sentiment.

Indigenous-Coding

Advocates of colonisation have always justified it by arguing they were 'saving' groups of people who were stuck in the past. They had been ‘left in the dark’ through ignorance of Christianity. In the more secular sense, this was framed as Europeans having journeyed through history to reach enlightenment, while the rest of the world was still in an ‘uncivilized’ state.

Christianity and progress had to be brought to these people to save their souls and bring them into the future with everyone else. Their Gods? There were only two possible ways to frame those. Either they were not real at all, or they were evil. Either way, they were obsolete.

In the Americas, these arguments were still used when corralling indigenous children into residential schools or tearing them from communities through the adoption system. Governments pushed the idea that they had to be forced to assimilate because they were 'backward' in their practices and beliefs.

In the settler-colonial state Canada, where Bioware is based, it's still common enough to hear people justify all of this as having been done "for their own good." Even those who admit that the ways colonization was perpetuated were cruel will still try to defend it by telling you, "it was bad, but their ancestors weren't saints either."

Sounding painfully familiar yet? A little uncomfortable in the context of Bellara's questline?

Jewish-Coding

Since the dawn of Christian Church, Jewish people have had a very fraught place in Christian theology. Christianity claims that that the coming of the messiah in the person of Jesus Christ makes the religion of Judaism obsolete. Christians believed the obvious answer to this problem was that Jewish people should convert.

When many did not, they were labeled as ignorant, obstinate, stuck in the past. They were so focused on their history that they couldn't see the truth which had been revealed in the present. There’s a significant legacy of this idea in Christian artwork with depictions of Synagoga blindfolded next to the clear eyed Ecclesia. You still hear echoes of this sentiment in antisemitic language today.

As for the nature of the Jewish God... there is some deviation here. For some Christians, He is God the Father, and He is good. For others — and this idea has been around from early Christianity till now — He is the Creator of the material world, but He is evil.

There are innumerable variations of Christian gnosticism that probably wouldn't be productive to get into on a Dragon Age Blog. What I need to underline here though, is that the idea of the Old Testament God as the devil/the demiurge/fundamentally evil, has been used to justify atrocity towards Jewish people for over a thousand years.

Should elves be blamed then? For the sundering of the Titans? For the Veil? For the Blight? For the evils of this world, created by their Gods?

Implications for Veilguard

Not only is religion in Dragon Age: The Veilguard often devoid of nuance or ignored outright, when the game does engage with it at all, it does so in a way that quite literally draws on these incredibly harmful antisemitic and anti-indigenous sentiments that have been (and still are) used to perpetuate real harm.

To be clear, I don't think the writing here intends to endorse the idea that elves should be blamed for any of what's going on. Bellara's anxieties are being projected onto her people as a whole while she grapples with what this all means for her, I get that. In fact, you could be generous and read some of this as a critique of this particular kind of anti-indigenous/jewish bigotry.

However, I don't think that absolves the writers of any of the implications they've created by confirming that the elven pantheon did exist and was canonically evil.

Elements of Dalish/elven culture might be preserved after all this, but the conclusion the game railroads you into is that their religion is obsolete. Just like Judaism. Just like the many Indigenous religions around the world. Except in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, it’s no longer just the bigotry of outsiders claiming that to be the case. It’s now the objective truth of the setting.

Going forward, the elves of Thedas can keep their culture, but they can’t practice their religion. If they continued to practice, they would be framed the way the Venatori are: evil and stuck in the past. This really can’t be overstated: this is the exact rhetoric that has justified centuries of violence and oppression of Jewish and Indigenous people. This rhetoric is still around and still weaponized.

It’s so cruel to create an in world ‘lineage’ that draws so heavily from their cultures and histories, then validate the rhetoric that has been used to hurt them. At best, it’s thoughtless. But as a company based in a settler-colonial state, this is something they should’ve put thought into, given that they chose to code their elves and Jewish and Indigenous. That was their responsibility, actually.

What gets me about all this is that they actually didn't need to force that conclusion at all. They could have kept the Evanuris as cruel tyrants without demonising the Creators and their worship at the same time.

The Evanuris weren't always Gods. They weren't even always rulers.

In Trespasser, when asked how they became Gods, Solas tells Lavellan that they did so slowly. That it started with a war. That fear bred a desire for simplicity. For right and wrong. For chains of command. That generals became respected elders, then kings, and finally gods.

Veilguard confirms all of this. The addition it makes is that before all this, the first elves were spirits who made their bodies out of the Titans. This all occurred over the course of thousands of years.

None of this needs to be retconned in order to allow for a respectful yet nuanced portrayal of religion!

TLDR pt2: bioware, u could’ve avoided literally ALL of this by making the evanuris part of a priestly class who seized power after the war with the titans. it wouldn’t even have undermined ur lore! u could’ve kept dalish religion alive! u could’ve implied complex political dynamics for your ancient elves without even having to write it! why didn’t you even try?

Trying to Fix This Mess

Say the elves took their bodies from the Titans and settled the lands of Thedas. Say the Titans even allowed this for a time. The dwarves were made from their own bodies after all.

Yet the elves didn't have the same connection with the Titans as the dwarves did. They had no stone-sense, so they couldn't understand the Titans' song.

Generations down the line, some of them took too much from the Titans. More than they were willing to give. That was when the Titans lashed out, making the earth tremble so that all the elves had built crumbled beneath them.

And what if the firstborn among the elves had taken up priesthood to guide the younger ones. They were closer to spirits than the elves that were born into this world, and so the younger ones looked to them for guidance. Maybe they were the ones who were trusted to reach out to the more powerful of the spirits who chosen stay in the Fade, their old kin who preferred to keep their distance from the physical world to preserve the essence of what they were. The spirits of Justice, of Benevolence, of Craft. Those who the elven people paid homage to, and trusted to preserve them in turn.

So when everything seemed to fall apart, the elves turned to their Keepers, their priests, and asked of them what they ought to do. How could they make the earth stop shaking? What would they have to do to be at peace again?

Whatever the spirits themselves may have responded, many of the Keepers (among them the Evanuris) took up arms and chose war. They saw it could be won so they fought, sundering Titans from their dreams and stilling the land.

And yet there was no peace.

Some Keepers sought to hold on to their power as generals, and wanted to wage war on new shores to keep it. Some Keepers thought they had already gone too far, claiming they had acted without the guidance of the spirits who hadn't wanted war.

These Keepers could've caused chaos and endless bloodshed, so the Evanuris formed their alliance to suppress the others. Likely, they thought they were doing so for the benefit of all the elven people. More war meant more death, and it was needless now that the land was still. And even if what they did to the Titans was wrong, it was done and they could not fix it. Better to silence those who meant to stir up fear among the people.

The Evanuris fought until they were the last faction left, naming the few holdouts the Forgotten Ones. They were praised for bringing peace to Elvhenan, and trusting in their guidance their people crowned them as rulers.

Yet some dissent always remained. None of them were infallible. They were no longer spirits, they hadn't been for thousands of years. They were now more accustomed to command than to priesthood after all that war. They had drawn on the power they had stolen from the Titans to gain the advantage over their enemies, and the corruption of the Blight was starting creep in, ever-so-slowly.

Maybe some of the people, unhappy with their rule, started to voice the thought that was expressed by their rival Keepers once more: that the Evanuris had grown distant from the spirits. That Elgar'nan didn't serve Justice anymore. That Mythal had strayed from Benevolence.

So Evanuris took the mantle of godhood for themselves. It was only for peace and stability.

It would be too dangerous if anyone could claim they were deviating from the will of the spirits, so they would claim they were those great spirits. Elgar'nan was Justice, Mythal was Benevolence. They would use their rule only for the benefit of the people, not abuse their power.

And there you go. None of what I've written above can't be neatly incorporated into the existing lore of Veilguard. It leaves the elves of Thedas precisely where they started in Dragon Age: Origins. Distant from their ancient Gods, trying to pick up the pieces of their forgotten past.

[glamfellens]

sorry 4 always complaining but i am so over "the gods arent real" reveals . why are u so opposed to faith and the belief in something u cant comprehend fully but still devote urself to anyway. is that not a form of love. yawn.

[kissingagrumpygiant]

Everyday you have to sit and wonder. Does the author of I Come To You With Nothing know they've changed the trajectory of so many lives

[magical-girl-coral]

I've been trying to write Judaism into DnD, and my original plan was to have Faeurn's first Jewish prophet pick one member from each race to adopt as his child to make that world's version of the twelve tribes of Israel. So I have him adopt three different half elves (High, forest, drow), a halfing, a half-orc, a gnome, a dwarf, a dragonborn, a human, a tiefling, and a Tabaxi but now I am stuck cause I ran out of races and I can't do any lizard ones for obvious reasons.

Help?

[revindicatedbyhistory]

Why do both shadowrun and dragon age have elves as fantasy jews where does that cone from

[brekkie-e]

To the person who just tagged my Mythal post with why Merril should have been the expert, not Morrigan at the Tempal of Mythal who said it was like "having a Jewish person explain Islam."

It really really isn't. It's like a professor of anthropology who has spent no time living in the culture of their "expertise" lecturing a member of said culture on their own history. Not to mention the fact that all her knowledge on elvhen history and lore is genuinely stolen, not unlike the deeds of actual "historical researchers" from universities. Her knowledge on elvhen lore is not from being raised by Mythal- by and large- it is from literally stealing from a Dalish clan.

I sincerely disagree with bringing up actual in world religions, especially those two given the state of world events, to this. However, if thats the argument presented- Judaism and Islam are both Abrahamic religions. Neither party can give an entire and accurate explanation of the other's religion- but there is generally a basic understanding of certain concepts. But further removed from that, you're still discussing two people who are active members of said cultures. A better example of this in game would be Solas and a Dalish Inquisitor or Merril. Two members of their own very specific culture who's experiences may have similarities, but they are still seperated by their beliefs at the end of the day.

Morrigan is outside of the culture and the history and the religion- speaking on it with an authority she has not earned but stolen. It's really just. Not similar to two irl members of a religion/community arguing about their different beliefs. They're not her beliefs, they're her hyperfixation.

Not that at the end of the day I disagree with the sentiment to have Merril in Inquisition, especially at the temple. I love the idea of Solas, Merril, and Morrigan in that mission the weirdest combination of bickering possible. Merril being frustrated with both of them for talking down to the Dalish. Solas being annoyed at Merril for being wrong, but also getting defensive and mad at Morrigan for focusing on the Dalish being wrong over the wrong thing. Morrigan and Merril being mad Solas is spouting facts but not citing his sources. Solas and Merril both being exhausted by a human explaining elf stuff to them. It had potential. But they couldnt even fit the Dalish Inquisitor in to the scene so there definitely not finding room for Merril.

[tenpixelsusie]

this is probably silly but why is dril on my dash isnt he openly an antisemite

[awwfullybigadventure]

My sister-in-law also showed me this, this is important to watch regardless how much like or dislike HP books, this is just important things to know and to think deeper.

hey do you think you could expand a bit on separating the art from the artist? clearly you’ve done it with jk rowling but what are your thoughts on it as a general idea?

okay, but you’re not going to like the answer.

here’s the truth: you can’t separate the art from the artist. not entirely. HP Lovecraft was an incredibly talented, but much more incredibly racist man. It would nice to say you don’t agree with his views but you can enjoy his works without that leaking in but…. well, I’m afraid that would be misunderstanding his books entirely.

Consider, for a second, that Lovecraft’s works were horror stories about extradimensional alien monsters having mutant children with humans, they were about invasions from distant monsters, they were about the purity of quaint European towns being tainted. Consider how this may have all been inflicted by the fact that he just simply despised anybody who wasn’t white. Consider how is opinions on “mixing the races” might fight into this; consider why being unable to maintain the “purity” of white Europe was the scariest thing of all to him.

This extends to Rowling too.

I would love to say we can just acknowledge that she is an awful, racist, antisemitic, transphobic person and then say “but at least her books are good,” because, well, they are, aren’t they? I would say so, for sure. But to suggest that one can separate her from them is…. ridiculous.

Consider why an antisemitic woman wrote about a species of goblins who live among us, but who for the most part keep to themselvesand are maybe a little bit oppressed by the institution, but also hold all the cards, all the money, run the banks.

Consider why a racist woman would write about a species of slaves who loved being enslaved, who enjoyed working for no pay, and cleaning up after humans, with the only small caveat of that they didn’t want to be beaten. Imagine that only the most radical of their species wanted to be free, and he still spent the rest of his life working for no pay and helping out a little white boy and his friends wherever he could. Consider why the only person in the story who thought they should be free, that they should have rights, was treated as an overzealous joke, who was acting against the wishes of those slaves who really LOVE being enslaved. Consider that Rowling went on to say that she kind of considers that girl to be black, now.

Consider why JK Rowling, an open and proud transphobe, wrote Rita Skeeter as having a large square jaw, thick “manly” hands, and dressing incredibly gaudily with the most obvious fake nails and fake teeth and fake hair and fake everything. Consider why a woman who tweets about how trans women are “foxes pretending to be hens to get in the hen house” might write this Rita Skeeter to then illegally transform her body in order to spy on children.

Harry Potter is full of Rowling’s bigotry, start to finish. Not even tangentially, like, “oh the goblins are bad, Rita Skeeter is bad, the house elves are bad, but most of it’s good!” because the deeper you dig and the longer you think the more you realise the entire story is based on her prejudices.

Harry Potter pretends to be an aracial story about found family, but if that were true, why are Harry’s distant ancestors important to who he is today even in the seventh book? Why does Harry have to live with his cousin and aunt and uncle? Because magic inherently prefers blood ties. Whilst Rowling was writing a story that seemed to say, “your heritage is not that important and doesn’t make you better than others” she was still writing a story about a boy who got all of his money through his bloodline, who was protected by living with his bloodline, no matter how evil, who was uniquely able to stop Voldemort because his bloodline passed down the invisibility cloak for generations and generations. Any step Harry takes he is compared to his perfect parents who were exactly like him — he looks just like his father, but he has his mother’s eyes, you know! — consider WHY a woman who is racist might’ve written a story like this. A story that on its surface, condemns a blood caste, but still in every step it takes, validates the idea that blood is thicker than water, and your geneological origin is what makes you special.

You can enjoy Harry Pottwr, of course you can. There are fantastic parts. I love a small group of teenagers deciding to become anarchies rebels and train to fight against fascism in secret. I love the murder mystery plots, I love how the series tells kids that it’s a good thing to be brave, and a good thing to fight injustice, and a good thing to challenge the government. But I cannot separate it from its author because it is such a product of its author. All of the structures of the world, the way things work in the universe, and drenched in Rowling’s beliefs, her bigotries. Of course they are: she made them.

Again. This doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy it. But I think we are past the day where we can pretend that disavowing a bigoted author is enough, and that that somehow separates the text from its bigotry. I think we are past the day where we can pretend that Harry Potter isn’t a deeply, inherently bigoted piece of media. Even the bits we love. I think we are beyond the day where we can truthfully pretend to separate it from her, because she is present through all of it. We MUST recognise its flaws. We MUST admit that she is in every part of it.

[0alix0]

Overusage of Lore

a lot of people tend to say that bioware put little to no lore into Veilguard, and i might be on a minority on this to me it's way too much and way too shallow

The entire game feels like writers just scream at you "Look at all the magical thing we have!! So we have Titans! And Evanuris! And Illuminati Those Across the See! And-- are you listening? You better listen cuz there are more! We have Shadow Dragons! We have Griffons! We--"

OMG calm down it's not a fucking Warcraft

the best thing in DA was the way it beautifully showed real life issues through the lens of medieval fantasy world.

The dalish weren't so fascinating because they had an entire language made for them and pretty tattoos. They were fascinating because they were enslaved, fought for freedom, then got their land taken away YET STILL continued to fight for survival, for their cultural identity, their children and their children's children, for freedom. Literally combination of native american's and jewish history. Because despite having one goal they all had different approach and opinion about other of their kin: city elves (those disconnected from their culture) and half-elves ("can they be considered elves?" "should they be allowed to be a part of dalish?").

The city elf origin wasn't so memorable because every npc had a backstory with a length of bible. It was memorable because it was the most obvious analogy on racial oppression, segregation, colonialism and fetishism in the entire franchise. Because it had the guts to actually show in details the horrors of these things.

Broodmothers weren't so horrifying because it's a female mixture of jubba hutt and a fucking pudge from dota with a detailed explanation their anatomy. They were horrifying because they were paralleling a very real misogyny, mistreatment, the way how women in some countries are seen as nothing but a walking uteruses, where the only thing they're good for is to give birth

AND bioware doubled it while doing the same thing with Orzammar, cast system & Rica!

The Circles weren't so interesting because we've got dozens of pages in WoT explaining their hierarchy/fraternities. No, they were interesting because it was literally a bunch of medieval GULAGs with a function of a mental hospital, it showed what mistreatments happen there, the abuse, child abduction and enforcement of religion.... And from the side of templars it was a discussion about professional deformation, addictions and the way high ranking people abuse those to control their underlings.

..... And you know, if we were back in origins, griffons, for example, would've probably been used as a parallel on irl eco terrorism. it might've been about how Wardens despite their good nature unintentionally bonded the general association of the entire animal species to their order and abused this connection to the point when the species was beyond preservation!

and btw, then that decision in davrin's quest would actually had any meaning, instead of throwing wardens into mud (again) and turning isseya into a villain for no fkn reason.

lore is only good as long as it's used for purpose, when it has things to discuss, not just exist

i don't fucking care about titans/evanuris/and other shit because they're just a 30 pages long article in codex and WoT trying to explain magic and write DA timeline almost to a fucking mesozoic era. it's BORING. Get me emotionally invested, then i'll care

[dalishious]

"But Busche said there was no asexuality in The Veilguard before, so Kirby must be lying!"

Busche did not write Lucanis, Kirby did

Busche specifically said was that they were not going to tell any "asexual stories", which is still true

Kirby most recently said after someone asked about it that she "intended Lucanis to be panromantic and demisexual", which does not inherently contradict her previously using the word bisexual to describe him; real people can use multiple labels to describe themselves after all (points at myself) let alone fictional characters who probably had to meet the needs of studio pressures we don't know about

THAT ALL SAID, I think it's kinda funny tbh how people are only just now like "how could the devs say something different than what was said before?" Like. Am I the only one who remembers the "elves are like Indigenous, Jewish, and Romani people" pipeline to "elves have nothing in common with any real minorities" bullshit? Because it is a BioWare dev classic move to say whatever they think is most convenient at the time they say it.

(Anyway my personal approach is this: If I think it makes sense and I like it, I'll adapt it into my tailored Thedas experience. Otherwise, I'll probably just ignore it.)

[canisvesperus]

Fandom mfs when it’s time to use Jewish trauma as a token in discourse about imaginary elves and robots and aliens etc: 😡🤬

Fandom mfs when Jews are targets of antisemitic violence in real life: 🙉🙈

[mundanewarden]

Brining Julian's post back to complain about the Evanuris again

The Elven cultures in Dragon Age are based off of Indigenous groups of Turtle Island, Romani Cultures, and Jewish cultures. They stated this directly.

One of the most prevalent antisemitic conspiracy theories - to the point that a lot of people joke about it without recognizing its harmful history - is that Jewish people are secretly ruling the world and pulling all the strings behind governments and tragedies

So what did bioware do with their God-monarchs of the culture they based in part on Jewish people?

Have them secretly be responsible for all the worlds horrors and puppeteering the horrible slave owning government!

Thanks Bioware (: We sure Needed That (: [sarcasm]

thinking again about how fucked up it is that bioware revealed that the evanuris aren't actually gods but rather murderers and slavers - but they said they're not gonna confirm anything about whether the maker exists.

the chantry gets so much slack in-game imo as a parallel to the catholic church, especially when you compare it to how the other religions/spiritual beliefs are portrayed.

you get so many companions and sympathetic npcs who follow the chant and believe in the maker and aside from the templars as an institution and a cleric or two they're basically made out to be good when they're... colonizing, forcing assimilation, and demonizing other groups.

outside of velanna and merrill there aren't really any proud dalish characters, solas and abelas make a point of distancing themselves from a dalish pc.

sten is the only qunari companion who continues to follow the qun regardless of player choices.

the avvar are portrayed as basically wild, uncivilized barbarians.

it just seems like most if not all the chantry-aligned characters either have their faith confirmed or held up as the best option despite its flaws. the tone is so often like, "yes the chantry committed genocide but look! mother gisele is helping both the refugee mages and the church-appointed supersoldiers hunting them down and executing them. it's equality! not everyone in the chantry is a bad person!"

[apoloadonisandnarcissus]

I have no problem of being accused of “whitewashing” Sauron’s character because the majority of the “Rings of Power” fandom doesn’t really understand what he is, anyway.

Sauron is not a human nor a symbolically human character (like the Elves, who are meant to represent the intellectual and artistic-driven humans on Tolkien legendarium). Charlie Vickers already said, using different words, that the fandom can’t really atribute human-like feelings (or characteristics) onto his character, and he’s absolutely correct. Because he’s not playing a human.

Charlie talked about this in the context of Sauron’s cosmic connection to Galadriel in “Rings of Power”, and almost everyone nods in agreement, but then makes the mistake of projecting human-like onto Sauron (narcissism, psychopath, sociopath, whatever it may be).

Sauron/Mairon is a Maia, which is the equivalent of a demigod or an angel in Tolkien legendarium; a servant to a Vala, the Gods or archangels of the lore. He was created by Eru Ilúvatar, so he’s divine in nature, a higher being, at the beginning. He chooses to side with Melkor/Morgoth (the Devil of the legendarium); he becomes a fallen angel, a demon. He’s not longer a “higher being” per say because, in Catholic-Christian tradition, demons operate on the lower frequencies of existence.

I would even argue that Tolkien wrote Sauron as more of an idea, than an actual character. With this being the reason why we don’t have much dialogue from him throughout the legendarium. Of course, “Rings of Power” needs to adapt this to the best of their possibilities, and I think they are doing a great job with Sauron’s character, and it’s also clear Charlie Vickers has done his homework on the character.

I still see a bit of hesitation on Charlie’s part on elaborating on Sauron in his interviews, which is very common among actors who have to play villains or “supervillains”. He doesn’t want to sound like he’s justifying his actions or making Sauron look sympathetic. But Charlie, like all actors, understands his character motivations better than anyone. And the show is trying to make the audience understand it, as well, but this usually flies over peoples’ heads who are accusing the show of making Sauron “relatable” in some way or even make you cheer for him or whatever.

This could be the case if he was a human character, but he isn’t. He’s a spiritual being, a supernatural creature, a demon. Us, humans, can’t never relate to him, no matter how many spins folks try to make on it. He operates in a total different level. And that’s why I hate with a burning passion these takes of him having “evil” human-like characteristics or mental disorders. To me, this is completely missing the point of Sauron’s character.

Of course he feels entitled to rule Middle-earth; he helped create the place alongside the other Valar and Maiar at the beginning of time. He literally shaped the world he seeks to dominate; his qualities are imprinted on it (this being the reason why he has true immortality and can’t never be destroyed for real, by the way). Of course he sees himself above Men, Elves and Dwarves, because he literally is. Tolkien wrote him that way.

Would you call the Christian/Jewish/Islamic God, Odin, Zeus, and all the others God of worldwide mythology “psychopaths” or “narcissists”? Probably not because they are Gods, and Gods are, in general, assh*les and d*cks.

Even in Tolkien legendarium, who drew inspiration from several mythological sources, Eru Ilúvatar sinks an entire island, killing everyone in it, because Men wanted to achieve immortality. Is he a “psychopath” too? Tolkien tells us that Eru is the supreme authority on his legendarium, the ultimate good, because he symbolizes the Christian God; and during the Second age He’s very much like the Old Testament God, a punisher, more than the modern “God the Father”, and Númenor is the Atlantis myth.

I’m not really a fan of the phrasing of Sauron seeing other characters like insects, but it’s a way to put it. Precisely because he’s a demigod, who’ll aspire to become an actual God. And that’s probably his biggest sin in the legendarium, alongside with betraying Eru Ilúvatar (God) for Melkor (Satan). On the Third Age, Sauron becomes a “incarnation of evil” and a “spirit of malice and hatred”, like Tolkien tells us. But he’s not “absolute evil” because Tolkien doesn’t believe in such a thing. I already talked about this in here.

In “Rings of Power”, it seems the “not wholly evil” bit is related to his connection with Galadriel. His true intentions/feelings towards her are yet to be revealed to the audience. Why does Sauron want to bind himself to Galadriel so badly? We had this plot in two seasons already.

The simplest explanation is that Sauron wants to harvest her light for himself, but he could easily find the same light in every other Elf who was born during the Years of the Trees in Valinor, because the light of the Two Trees also shines on them. Even Celebrimbor had the same light, and Sauron never had the intention of binding them together. So, indeed, what makes Galadriel different? Because he was willing to share his power with her, too.

All of this is very theological, but it is what it is. Don’t shoot the messenger. We can’t really analyze Tolkien legendarium without the heavy religious Catholic-Christian inspiration, because that’s the core of the mythology Tolkien created. It’s really inevitable if we want to understand it.

Anyway, you can think of Second Age Sauron as a sort of “Dracula on steroids”. I think that’s the closest comparison I can find. Because Dracula is also demonic character, but he’s not a “fallen angel” like Sauron. I wouldn’t exactly compare him with representations of Satan/Devil/Lucifer on pop culture, because that’s Melkor.

Then we have character arcs, and even Sauron has one in Tolkien legendarium: Sauron starts “Rings of Power” in his repentance era (Halbrand); then we have Annatar or “Sauron the reformer” who wants to rebuild Middle-earth with good intentions; then the “King of Men” when he starts to get carried away with pride and power; until he returns to his role as Morgoth’s secretary/representative, at the end of the Second age; he gets defeated. When he returns in the Third Age (the version most fans are familiar with from “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the Peter Jackson adaptations), he claims to be Morgoth come again, and this is the evilest he has even been, a “second incarnation of evil” like Tolkien describes him.

[isaidyoulookshitty]

idk it is so upsetting to me that veilguard is the first dragon age game i won't be replaying. when i was 15 i played origins so many times (almost a dozen) it is one of the only games i have ever 100% finished. da2 was the same! and while i didn't make it through as many playthroughs of inquisition i put hundreds of hours into it and made an effort to get to the bottom of everything the game threw at me. until veilguard, i had bought every available dragon age dlc for all games, tried to play almost every route given in the story choices, and spent hours reading through codex entries to soak up as much lore as i could.

veilguard has rendered all of that completely null.

it feels almost spiteful at this point that this new frakenspliced bioware cared so little to honor the bones and meat of the first three games. 15 years i have spent loving and cherishing (and criticizing) this franchise and now i feel like a fucking idiot for it. my grey warden? canonically awol and never addressed again. hawke? irrelevant and, for some players, potentially stuck in the fade forever. inquisitor? stripped of any complexity or depth i had given her in favor of the most syrupy, out of character fairytale true love's kiss ending with a man that shattered her worldview and broke her heart. how do you take 10 years to craft an ending this dissatisfying and thoughtless?

and the world i spent a decade and a half fighting for, shaping with player choices, and calling home? gone. "overwhelmed by the blight." literally scorched earth for the next game to build on with whatever the writers pull out of their ass to make players forget all about the original dragon age. it's tragic! disrespectful to longtime fans at best, at worst it feels intentional and like i am being made the butt of a joke told by writers who in the promotional material sound like they could not even be assed to play the games they're attempting to draw from. veilguard is just a product to be sold, not a story worthy of The Dragon Age Setting.

and i haven't even touched on all my gripes with the game's writing, the sanitization of any canon conflict that could be uncomfortable or difficult to address, the stale and cutesy therapyspeak and lessons in basic morality that are baked into every in-game interaction (most of which are shallow and all the same anyways) compared to the dialogue trees from the other 3 games. it is so frustrating to see that the devs chose to cave to a decade of vitriolic fandom politics in favor of addressing the kettle they wrote themselves into.

instead of hand-waving racism toward elves, the panic over qunari, the isolation of the dwarves, the corruption of the chantry, the abuse in the circles of magi, and slavery in tevinter, we should have been given the chance to confront all of it. to put a real end to it. we will never get to do that now. in fact, in their failure to follow through, bioware has only succeeded in exacerbating all of these issues. they have made the elves, which they have openly ADMITTED were "inspired" by Jewish and indigenous peoples, their mouthpiece for white guilt and shame passed down from one's ancestors (while also gutting elves' religion, culture, history, social differences, etc. i could go on). they PERPETUATE the same stereotypes of barbarity, violence, and warmongering imposed on the qunari by the rest of thedas by continuing to make them an opposing enemy force with the exception being a couple of friends they have neatly packaged for us. the unsatisfying conclusion to the mage-templar schism in inquisition is inconsequential. who the player chose to HEAD THE SOUTHERN CHANTRY as divine is deliberately made irrelevant. the dwarves are still isolated and ignorant of their origins save for harding (assuming she doesn't end up killed) and a single closed-off group. and the slaves in tevinter (again, mostly elves)? conveniently kept out of sight and conversation when we finally get to minrathous. everything that happened to fenris to make him the character he is, arguably the most impactful and sympathetic out of all the da2 companions, is not even addressed, much less tackled. all of it is swept under the rug.

i wanted dragon age: dreadwolf. i wanted a solid conclusion to a story almost 20 years in the making. a dragon age reboot might even have been a great idea somewhere down the line, but this was not the game to do it with. it was supposed to be a sequel and they couldn't even get that right. did i enjoy parts of it? of course! i finished it! but i won't be doing it again. the game clearly intends you to, considering a significant portion is locked away by decisions players are forced to make pretty early on, but i can't make myself do it. it makes me way too sad.

i could go on about how i, a queer and nonbinary adult fan, thought their handling of gender and LGBTQIA+ identities was heavy-handed, infantilizing, and felt so out of place within the setting it makes easy fodder for the "woke=broke" crowd that wouldn't have been receptive to queer rep anyway, but that would need to be another post in itself. not to mention the romance! unfortunate that i chose to romance lucanis not knowing his is now notorious for a lack of content, meaningful dialogue, pacing, and actual development. i won't even get to see the other romances in comparison because, as i have said, i will not be replaying.

[spideyslag]

Steve was supposed to be Santa for the Stark Industries families Christmas party. He volunteered, does every year, and honestly, it just makes sense for Captain fucking America to be Santa.

This year, however, shit happened and Steve got called off on a mission last minute. Bucky, ever the Saint (in Steve’s and… no one else’s opinion. Maybe one other persons opinion) said he’d fill in. Their measurements are roughly close enough for him to fit the suit.

Tony wasn’t thrilled about the development, but, well, he was in a bind and Bucky was wiling and able and he had it on good authority from Sam that the centennial was, shockingly, really good with kids, actually.

Of corse, because Bucky’s life is a fucking joke, Peter had volunteered to be Steve’s elf like he did the last few years, too. His naturally delightful disposition and lean, short, stature just made it make sense. And Peter was just a sweetheart like that.

Of corse, for Bucky this was an incredibly amusing turn of events.

“Oh my god. You look ridiculous. You’re my elf?”

“I’m Steve’s elf. And you’re one to talk.”

Peter tried not to snicker at Bucky’s appearance.

“What, this isn’t doing it for you?”.

Fake white beard, coke bottle glasses, fat red suit. “I’ve never been more turned on in my life” he deadpanned.

“And here I said we’d never try role play”.

“Bucky!” Peter hissed.

“Okay doll, okay, I’ll be good, I’ll be good.”

“Good. Dont want to get yourself on your own naughty list this close to Christmas, do you?”

“Peter. we are both Jewish.” Bucky chuckled.

“Okay. Let me rephrase. You don’t want to be on my naughty list.”

“Well, that depends on what my punishment will be” Bucky purred.

“Okay you are without question the world’s horniest Santa. Let’s go. We’re gonna be late.”

“You’ve got it doll”.

Later that night, no one is surprised by the photo Clint sends the group chat of one Santa kissing one of his elves with a beer bottle in his hand.

Couldn’t have changed first? How the fuck am I explaining this to my kids?

This is like the fucked up gay version of i saw mommy kissing Santa Claus Sam teased

why were your kids still at the party at 2 am? Came buckys quick response.

Fair enough. Dare I ask why you’re still up at 4 am if you and Peter left at 3?

‘🤐’ was Peter’s answer before taking Bucky’s phone out of hand, and demanding he come back to bed.

[villain-menagerie]

Writer's racism being an integral plot points since the foundation of the series is not a plot twist I expected, but I should have lol

EuroGamer: 'BioWare knew the deepest secrets of Dragon Age lore 20 years ago, and locked it away in an uber-plot doc'

Original creator David Gaider on how "some of the big mysteries are being solved".

Rest of post under a cut due to length and possible spoilers.

"As I write about the secrets hidden in Dragon Age's mysterious Fade, and as I uncover some of them playing Dragon Age: The Veilguard, one question keeps rising up in my mind. How much did BioWare know about future events when first developing the series more than 20 years ago? That's a long time, and back then BioWare didn't know there would be a second game, which is why Dragon Age: Origins has an elaborate and far-reaching epilogue. Why lay so much lore-track ahead of yourself if you don't think you'll ever get there? But look more closely at Origins and there are big clues suggesting BioWare did know about future Dragon Age events. There are obvious signs in the original game, such as establishing recurring themes like Old Gods and the Blight and Archdemons. But there's also Flemeth, Morrigan's witchy mother, who's intimately linked to events in the series now - more specifically: intimately linked to Solas. Does her existence mean Solas was known about back then too? There's only one person I can think of to answer this and it's David Gaider, the original creator of Dragon Age's world and lore. We've talked before, once in a podcast and once for a piece on the magic of fantasy maps, where we discussed the creation of Dragon Age's world. And much to my surprise, when I ask him what he and the BioWare team knew back then, he says they knew it all. "By the time we released Dragon Age: Origins, we were basically sure that it was one and done, but there was, back when we made the world, an overarching plan," he says. "The way I created the world was to seed plots in various parts of the world that could be part of a game, a single game, and then there was the overall uber-plot, which I didn't know for certain that we would ever get to but I had an understanding of how it all worked together. "A lot of that was in my head until we were starting Inquisition and the writers got a little bit impatient with my memory or lack thereof, so they pinned me down and dragged the uber-plot out of me. I'd talked about it, I'd hinted at it, but never really spelled out how it all connected, so they dragged it out of me, we put it into a master lore doc, the secret lore, which we had to hide from most of the team.""

"This uber-plot document was only viewable on a need-to-know basis, he says, and only around 20 people on the team had access to it - other senior writers mostly. And even though Gaider left the Dragon Age team after Inquisition, and then eight years ago BioWare altogether, meaning he didn't work on The Veilguard at all, he believes - by looking at the events in the new game - his uber-plot lore "has more or less held up". That's impressive. What's even more impressive, or exciting, is that back then he also envisaged a potential end state for the entire Dragon Age series - a point at which it would make no sense for the series to carry on. "I always had this dream of where it would all end, the very last plot," he says, "which I won't say because who knows, we could still end up there. But the idea that this uber-plot was this sort of biggest, finite... That the final thing you could do in this world that would break it was there as a 'maybe we would get to do that one day'... There was just the idea of certain big, world-shaking things that were seeded in that arc, some of which have already come to pass, like the return of Fen'Harel." You've read that correctly: the idea to have Fen'Harel, also known as the Dread Wolf, reappear, was seeded all the way back then, way before Inquisition - the game in which he does actually reappear. But the concept for Solas, as a character who was Fen'Harel in disguise, was a newer idea. "That spawned from a conversation I had with Patrick [Weekes] and a number of other writers," Gaider says, "as an idea of 'what if you had a villain that spent an entire game where he's actually in the party and you get to know him?' Now, the god version and his larger role in the plot, yes that was known, but not that he would be presented as a character named Solas." Fen'Harel being known about means the other elven gods were known about, which means all of that stuff Solas reveals about his godly siblings - that they're not gods at all but evil elven mages he locked away behind the Veil - was known about back then too. "Oh yeah," Gaider says. "Everything that Solas tells you [at the end of Inquisition DLC, Trespasser]: it's all part of that original uber-lore - that was all in our mind." But why have so much lore if you're not certain you'll get to ever realise it? Well, to create a believable illusion. By creating an "excess" of lore, as Gaider describes it, Origins made Thedas feel like an old and believable place. A place with history, rather than a Western set that was all facade and no substance."

"BioWare also did something canny with the lore it did relay then, too: it shared it through the voices of characters living in the world, making it inherently fallible. In doing this, Dragon Age veiled its truths behind biases. The church-like organisation of the Chantry proclaims one truth, while the elves and dwarves proclaim another. Sidenote: you can experience this yourself through different racial origin stories in Dragon Age: Origins. This way, there's no one, objective, irrefutable, truth. "To get the truth, you kind of have to pick between the lines," Gaider says. So even though elven legends are coming true through the existence of Solas and The Veilguard's antagonist gods, it doesn't mean that's the one and only truth. There's truth in what the Chantry teaches and what the dwarves say, he tells me, which ignites my curiosity intensely. BioWare has also been tricksy in how it's rubbed out the lore the further back in time you go. "In general, the further the history goes back, we always would purposefully obfuscate it more and more," Gaider says - "make it more biased and more untrue no matter who was talking, just so that the absolute truth was rarely knowable. I like that idea from a world standpoint, that the player always has to wonder and bring their own beliefs to it." It leads into a founding principle of Dragon Age, which is doubt - because without it, you can't have faith, a particularly important concept in the series. It's where the whole idea of the Chantry's Maker comes from and with it, the legend about the fabled Golden City - now the Black City - at the heart of the Fade. This is the very centre of the lore web, and, I imagine, it's close to the series endpoint Gaider imagined long ago. All secrets end there. Did Gaider know what was in the Black City when he laid down Origins' lore? That's the question - and it startles me how casually he answers this. "Oh, yeah," he says. "What was in the Black City: that's the uber-plot. I knew exactly. "Was it as detailed in the first draft of the world?" he goes on. "No. I had an idea of the early history because that's where I started making the world. So the things that were true early-early: I knew exactly what the Black City was and the idea of what the elves believed, and what humans believed vis-a-vis the Chantry - that was all settled on really early. Then I expanded the world and the uber-plot bubbled out of that.""

"Gaider shows me the original cosmology design document for Dragon Age: Origins as if to prove this - or rather for the game that would become DAO. The world was known as Peldea back then. I can't share this with you because I see it via a shared screen on a video call, and because Gaider doesn't want me to, mostly because the ideas are so old they're almost unrecognisable from what's in the series now. But I can tell you it's a document that's just over a page in length, and that there's a circular diagram at the top showing the world in the middle and the spirit realm ringed around it. And on that document is reference to the Chantry's beliefs about a God located in a citadel that can be found there. Gaider says BioWare knew about Fen'Harel (the Dread Wolf) 20 years ago when it was developing Dragon Age: Origins, and that he'd one day reappear. The Fade wasn't known as the Fade back then, either, but as the Dreaming, because it's the place people go when they dream - an idea that lives on still. And if that sounds familiar to any fans of The Sandman among you, it should. "I'd say The Sandman series was probably fairly prominently in my head," says Gaider. "I liked that amorphous geography that was born from the psyche of collective humanity. I'd say yes, if I was to point at something specifically, that's probably where the very first inspiration of it took root." It's a lot to take in, but it reinforces the admiration I have for Dragon Age. Just as I have when hearing about the creation of my other favourite fantasy worlds, such as A Song of Ice and Fire, I begin to understand the magnitude - and the deliberateness - of the plotting that went on. I wonder if one day the Dragon Age series will end in the way Gaider first imagined, albeit slightly altered by the many other pairs of hands shepherding it along now. What a curious feeling it must be to know, so many years in advance, where things might go. Where that end is, I don't know, but I do know we'll take a significant step towards it in The Veilguard. After all, we're coming into contact with gods who were there at the recorded beginning of it all. "Yeah - we have access to people who can tell us the truth from first-hand experience," Gaider says, "although again, it depends on what the writers did with it. But if they continued the tradition of Dragon Age, you never know for sure if Solas is telling you everything, or what you're learning is the entire truth. "But yes, some of the big mysteries are being solved. I mean, will they one day definitively tell you about the Maker? Will we crack the big mysteries of the world and just make them answered finally? And does that ruin one of the central precepts that Dragon Age is founded upon? Maybe," he says. "Ultimately, that lore, when you make it big and you hint at it and hint at it and hint at it, it becomes a Chekhov's Gun of sorts. Eventually you got to pony up.""

[source]