#bc listen you can't directly take from these narratives and then say oh but it isn't like that that's just Irresponsible

[lemonhemlock]

i am way too late for any of this, but i felt like ranting a little (a lot) over tma, so here it goes.

i actually really, really liked the dreamlike quality of the S5 statements. i think they're some of jonny's best work. so evocative and just beautifully written, the feeling of horror so prevalent, so delicate, so entrapping. i would listen to them absolutely enthralled. what a submersive experience. so on that front, 100% would recommend.

the problems i have are mainly with the meta-plot. certainly, personal preferences and biases come into play here, bc i despise jonmartin with the fire of a thousand suns and would have loved a jonelias corruption narrative, but, i feel that, in his quest to appease the j-mart shippers, jonny sacrificed a lot of his story's integrity. also, i have no way of verifying this, but it also felt like he inserted his own biases in a way that wasn't necessarily productive.

ultimately, i feel like he disrespected his main antagonists and that essentially translated into a sort of irreverence towards his own story. elias was easily his most dramatic and interesting villain (regardless of what he originally intended for him, it's how he developed throughout the story & i think there is a certain honesty in a writer acknowledging and respecting that), stole every scene he was in, yet after his great villain reveal in S4, he is absolutely absent throughout his entire apocalypse. it creates a lack of catharsis that i find bothersome. his death is way too easy. yet when he finally appears in MAG 193, it is glorious. he is terrifyingly in the throws of religious ecstasy as the eye's pupil. such an interesting idea! so little it was developed though bc jonny for some reason doesn't like elias.

there's this entire commentary about how elias is really just there to be eye's pupil until jon takes over from him, bc it's jon the eye truly desires. as if after faithfully serving the beholding for two centuries and bringing about his ritual, the eye would just disregard elias and actually be interested in the one person who is unwilling to play ball. please be serious. not saying that jon can't be the eye's "special little boy" or whatever, but the nerfing of elias/jonah borderlines on petulant. ofc, jonny is the author and you cannot begrudge a man for writing whatever he wants, but, as a listener, i have to say it feels very unsatisfying whenever authorial biases directly affect the storyline. very deus-ex-machina. very unearned.

i also have a problem with how the eye was ultimately handled and, once again, nerfed. the introduction of this element in relation to the beholding, that it sees but does not understand, felt very trite to me. it was added as a way to de-power the eye and elevate the web. but how could it even be true in the context of the entity conceptualization? the reason scopophobia is a thing is because people fear someone is behind the watching. what they fear is judgment or someone keeping tabs on them and using that information to harm them in some way. that requires intelligence, a capacity to distinguish between the harmless and the incriminatory, a propensity for casting moral judgment, of holding people accountable, of assigning blame, of discovering people's deepest, darkest secrets, of weaponizing shame. no one is afraid of a crow or a cat staring back at them, because, while those are also living beings, they lack the higher intelligence that creates the context necessary for scopophobia. so how can the eye not possess intelligence? apparently it doesn't, because jonny decided he didn't like the eye and the spider was oh-so-cooler instead.

but that only lead to the spider being way too overpowered than it should have been. as the so-called brain of the operation, the web really manifests a lot of faults that could have been exploited, yet the character never do, because the web needs to be true It Girl for some reason. this all feels very childish. the web's motivations do not work in-universe. we are often told it doesn't have a ritual because it is content with playing its games of manipulation within the world as it currently is. and that honestly seemed a rather fair assessment to make, but later proved to be a red herring, because it was the web that was actually behind the eye's own ritual.

i have several gripes with this. 1. if the spider is so smart, why doesn't it/can't it have its own ritual and re-shape the world according to its own preferences? why does it have to piggyback on the eye's grind? 2. the spider's big plan seems to be bringing about the eyepocalypse just to convince the characters to let the fears out into the metaverse so it can start again. because, as it turns out, the eyepocalypse isn't really it's preferred state of being? it was the status-quo after all? the web DID prefer the world as it was, because it allowed it to thrive off manipulation and puppeteering, things it can't really engage in as much as it would like, since now everyone is trapped inside various fear domains. so, why-oh-why, not just leave the world as is? why even bring about an apocalypse in the first place if your intention is to always inhabit a apocalypse-less place?

i felt like this was such a plot-hole of an explanation the way it was presented. the web's greatest flaw was that it loved intricate plots so much there was a real danger of over-complicating its own plans and failing to see the forest from the trees, so to speak. the eye could have been used not to boggle down on meaningless details and ramifications, but to get a better sense of the bigger picture, something the web could very well lose sight of (pun intended). so the web's "plan" could have been ultimately rendered meaningless, because instead of choosing the simplistic, straightforward, occam's razor solution (no apocalypse, just thrive off the world as it is), it chose the overly complicated path that placed it in a situation it didn't thrive in (eyepocalypse) and made it even more complicated to get out of in the first place. it basically surrendered its destiny into the hands of people who had zero reasons to act sympathetic and could have very well chosen to destroy the entire world, fears included. and yet i am supposed to be in awe of the web's great intelligence and buy into the whole dumb eye propaganda?

many things have already been said about the moral dilemma at the end of S5 and my take on that is that jon was right. it was the merciful and just solution to prevent other people from other universes from suffering at the hands of fear entities. but i will be indulgent and account that it is a difficult choice to make for anyone, since human beings are so survivalist in nature and the choice to just make the fears someone else's problem in the hopes of their plans maybe getting foiled more effectively by others is tantalizing. who knows what any of us would have chosen had we been in their situation? perpetuating the horrors on someone else just so you could get reprieve is so cravenly but it's human and i get it. however, by no means is this a happy ending the way it was framed by the narrative. what melanie, georgie, basira and martin did was horrible and evil, but it is never acknowledged in that way. the least jonny could have done is have jon resist martin's selfish decision and have martin genuinely kill him. but, no, martin gets his romantic send-off together with jon, with the open possibility that they get transported to another world where they could start over. melanie, georgie and basira get to start a new life in the entity-less world, after contributing almost nothing. the worst characters get to live & they're validated in their awful behaviour.

however. i do feel like there were other ways to resolve the eyepocalypse without resorting to a horrible sophie's choice in the first place, but that would require a more extensive endgame re-write.

[cumbiazevran]

one of the things i often think about in terms of how Elf narratives are written in the game is how little BioWare devs understand colonisation and it’s related struggles.

it’s from the constant framing of the Dalish as not really knowing what they lost, to Solas’ plans. don’t get me wrong, i love the bastard egg as a narrative device, and i’m not immune to posing him as a foil in my Lavellan’s inquisitors own narrative. however, the only people i’ve ever come in contact with that are desperate to reclaim imperial pasts are white people, not people of colour.

because no matter how much they whitewash elves in the game, the truth is theirs is a “narrative of colour”, so to speak. it’s a narrative of marginalisation and peoples who have seen outside of Whiteness through one device or the other. it’s about the layers and layers of colonisation poc have to deal with every day.

if you’re going to put that into an entire franchise, you should do it responsibly, though, granted, this is BioWare we’re talking about.

but i digress: my point here is i never stop being baffled about how through ignorance or willingness (it makes little difference in the outcome) the continue to write Elvish narrative in the games as if they didn’t know what they lost, and their only way through is Restoring An Empire. this isn’t about unreliable narrators or plot devices, it’s about the awareness that does exist that events like colonialism cannot be undone. they are wounds that take different forms depending on where you stand, but they never close, not really. they change history and that’s that: there’s no going back. ever.

and people know this. the idea of restoring empires is so tied to whiteness to me, and so drastically different to anti-colonialism. it’s so telling in the approach of the devs.