#datv fandom critical

[housederiva]

The amount of people I have seen say ‘well obviously I'm picking Harding for the end choice, there's no way I'm losing Assan’

Are you forgetting this a whole Davrin attached to that bird

[qwainte]

"I'm glad Veilguard didn't show any slavery in Tevinter or significantly incorporate anti-Elvish discrimination into the setting. These things are too upsetting and I play games to escape the horrors of the real--"

Go play Animal Crossing

[visceralcoma]

Why is every elf rook I see in the tags just thin as fuck? What happened to the outrage of prior games not letting us have chubby or thicker characters. And now that we have the options… why is every elf rook I see just a burst of wind away from being knocked out - that’s how skinny they are.

Oh right I know why.

[sha-brytols]

i'm sorry but the "da fandom is a little racist BUT veilguard holds most of the blame for making davrin so irrelevent in the game" excuse is the weakest shit i've ever heard. no actually i genuinely think this is almost exclusively a fandom issue. like i won't argue that the "davrin vs harding choice is reliant on assan" shit john epler pushed was unbelievably racist and i won't argue that there's merit to the fact that it was tone deaf at Best to have the black man's character arc so reliant on his animal companion but i'm sorry you cannot fucking convince me that the "knight in shining armor with a gentle heart and a cute animal companion that takes you out on picnic dates and carves you little wooden trinkets" character is not almost Perfectly Engineered to be the most popular romance option in any game ever and yes i fully believe the only reason he isn't is entirely hinged on the fact that he's black and no amount of whataboutism towards the devs can convince me otherwise

[postcardsfromheapside]

Enjoy my low effort, benedryl fueled meme commentary

[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

[fangbanger3000]

we need to talk about The Silence and The Song

[PLEASE READ] edit to add: i realise that this post has been reblogged far and wide and that there is not a lot i can do about it now, but this is me trying anyway.

posting examples from the fic about my issues with its repetitive structure was careless of me, and i apologise to those of you who read it and became insecure about your own writing style. as someone who has worked with ai in academic settings, it's incredibly difficult for me to explain to you how the tone and structure of ai-generated fiction works and how, after reading enough of it, you can simply just tell. i do also realise that this is an incredibly weak argument, which is why i didn't include it when i originally wrote this post.

all that to say: there is an enormous difference between "beginner's writing" and ai writing. being repetitive as a new writer (or a seasoned one who just likes using repetition) is so normal. as is flowery/purple language. i've read hundreds of books and fics and the difference between these traits in ai-text and actual works is starkly clear. please don't feel anxious over the examples i've used in this post.

again, i apologise for any distress i have caused.

as per my last post, i have received a lot of encouragement to go public with this, and the more disappointed people i have in my dms, the angrier i get. so i will.

the silence and the song is an ancient arlathan au DA fic on ao3 by luxannaslut, and it is partly, if not entirely, written by an ai. i have no wish to be involved in any kind of fandom drama or witch hunting or bullying, but as a writer myself there are few things that piss me off more than watching people steal the work of others because they can't be fucked to write. it's disrespectful to your fellow writers, it's disrespectful to your readers, and it's disrespectful to the authors of the works the ai is stealing from.

ai is a plague that has no business being in creative spaces and you must do better.

the writing pattern

there was something very odd and monotone about the sentence structure of tsats that i couldn't quite place, so i fed chatgpt a prompt along the lines of "two people in a fantasy novel hate each other, but they secretly desire one another, and they kiss", and the screenshots above are the results. the third one is an excerpt from chapter 40 of tsats. the writing pattern is identical and it doesn't seem like the "writer" has even bothered to pretend they wrote it. if you're going to use ai, at least be sneaky about it. you know, paraphrase a little.

nonsense descriptions

"her nimble fingers worked with quiet precision" (ct. 1), "his grip firm but tender" (ct. 33), "her gown pooling around her like embers" (ct. 1).

fingers don't make sound, so what does quiet precision mean? as opposed to what? her joints cracking with every movement? how is a grip firm but tender? what does that mean? since when do embers pool?

the entire fic is littered with these adjectives that contradict each other or just straight up do not make sense, because all an ai does is generate descriptive language with no understanding of what the words it's spitting out actually mean. i could spend hours picking out examples from the seven billion pages worth of text, but i quite frankly have better things to do and would simply challenge you to try getting through a chapter or two without noticing the pattern.

repetition at structure-level

all the scenes in this fic are described in pretty much the same way. they open with purple prose vomit of the surroundings; solas is standing somewhere looking "unreadable as ever"; ellana's fiery golden molten fire copper ember ginger red hair is flowing this and that way; there's some dialogue with whoever is present and it leaves ellana feeling different variations of "something she couldn't name". this is, once again, a blatantly obvious sign of ai. below is the result of me feeding chatgpt the line "write me a scene from a fantasy novel where a woman with red hair is sitting on the ground in a magical garden at night", and side by side with that is the opening scene of the fic. make your own judgement.

repetition at word-level

this one speaks for itself. we fucking get it. her dress is orange, her hair is red, mythal's presence is heavy in the room, solas looks unreadable, compassion is sitting on her head like a crown, solas' ears are betraying him and ellana's move with every thought she thinks. we get it. the issue here is that an ai remembers the info you feed it, but not necessarily the info it shits out. if it's being told to write scene after scene of an elven woman with a gown that looks like fire doing xyz, it's going to do so with no regard for how many times the reader has already been informed of these details.

lastly: the breakneck speed

359,6k words in four weeks by a person who allegedly is employed and married and hasn't pre-written anything? no. any writer will tell you that this simply isn't possible. it absolutely infuriates me to see how much praise this "writer" gets for posting up to three full chapters in a day without anyone calling bullshit. i am pulling out my hair, you guys.

why i'm not going to live and let live this one

perhaps i would be less angry if the fic was some silly bullshit court intrigue Y/A stuff, but this is a text that handles very heavy and triggering topics such as SA, coercion, domestic abuse, and other things of the same vein. to sit back and put your feet up while having a robot write these extremely sensitive and very real human experiences with words it has stolen from texts written by actual persons is fucking heinous. the "writer" should be deeply ashamed of themselves and i'm sick and tired of watching people eat up their bs.

and on that note: the amount of people in my dm's telling me that they feel stupid and naive for not clocking this has infuriated me more than anything else. you're not foolish for this. being fed ai-generated bullshit is not what is supposed to happen on any creative platform and much less a fandom-centred one, so of course no one approaches a fic through that lens. fandom and fic writing is supposed to be about passion and the only person in this situation who needs to do better and change their behaviour is luxannaslut. polluting our creative spaces, wasting the time of your readers, and minimising the effort of actual writers who are working hard to provide content for us all to share and enjoy is vile and so, so lazy. i beg of you: do better.

[asharaks]

like i do think there is a consideration to be made here, that essentially when they saw that lucanis' romance wasn't landing the way they hoped (due to lack of content, dodgy pacing, and overall being declaimed as unsatisfying), the writer pivoted from "he's bisexual" to "he's panromantic demisexual"; this does feel, to me, like a disingenuous attempt to pass the problems with his romance off as Features, to shield against those criticisms without actually addressing them. if this very tentative slowburn was always the intent, the romance fails to convey it, in a game with all the subtlety of a brick in its other writing; if it wasn't, then assigning him asexuality as a shield is cheap and insulting.

ALL THAT BEING SAID. accusing his side romance with neve of "lacking emotional depth", accusing her of being incapable of intimacy, taking one throwaway line about her hat coming off as a sign that they're fucking like rabbits from day one: What's Wrong With You. why can't you view brown women as capable and deserving of care and intimacy outside of sex. why do you assume his relationship with neve - which is characterised by sweetness, hesitancy, and obvious affection on both sides - is shallower and more physical than his relationship with rook?

just on the whole whatever your feelings about lucanis and lucanis/neve are can we be careful and thoughtful in the way we talk about the woman of colour in this situation please. can we maybe consider that when typing our rants:)

[thevulturesquadron]

Dropping this as an example and leaving out any names - so please don’t go and start an argument with these people or harass anyone. It’s not why I'm writing this, it gives them more attention, and there is no room for an actual conversation.

But, to my point! I am starting to believe that people online aren’t always shitheads on purpose. They are seriously lacking reading comprehension and that is absolutely terrifying.

In this one example the dev has not said any of the things they are being accused of. Let me break this down a bit.

Starting with the Bellara statement - the answer literally says Bellara is the most knowledgeable when it comes to elven magic EXCEPT compared to the elven gods. And even then, it’s prefaced by two things: 1. PROBABLY, which is used to show that it’s not a certainty and that there's a high chance there are others around the world (let’s saaay... people like Merrill), but they are not within reach so it's inconsequential. And 2. ‘Bellara ASSUMES’, which implies she doesn’t actually hold the totality of knowledge. The game shows again and again that she is in the process of learning through experimenting and nothing in this answer contradicts that. Additionally, literally during the game, Bellara has access to Solas’s ancient library at the Lighthouse AND an ancient archive of knowledge. Basically she has MANUALS on ancient magic from the very people that practiced it.

2. ‘Evanuris don’t understand magic’ - again the answer never said that. What it conveyed was that the Evanuris had access to magic and found ways to make it work for them. It was a tool, much like electricity: we didn’t invent it, it is a phenomenon we learnt to turn into power and use. The game kept reminding everyone again and again that the Evanuris weren’t gods, just powerful mages and Epler’s answer just reaffirmed that. (Plus this is something previous games have also hinted at repeatedly). The Elven Gods didn’t invent magic, and much like everyone else in Thedas, after they tapped into that force they started applying it in ways they were able to understand. Solas himself (the voice the devs created to tell a story) said that in so many ways throughout the game, so why are people acting like this is the first time they're hearing about it??

Anyway, this is just me taking the time to analyze one of the many absolutely mind-boggling takes that exist out there, and there’s… a lot of them. These people should just put the phone down and open a book.

[butchvamp]

okay i've played a bit more and i have a lot of thoughts about Taash and the way gender is being handled overall in this game...

first i will say the positives which is that i do really appreciate the attempt at incorporating trans characters both in the world as companions and allowing us to make those options in the cc. and as someone who also writes dark fantasy stories with trans characters i do understand how difficult it can be to incorporate these identities into a world that doesn't necessarily have the same language as we do; but overall the way they've approached this feels very... i've seen some people call it unpolished but i actually feel the opposite. it's almost clinical (therapy-speak in general has been a main criticism of this game) and it's way too polished, in my opinion, which is what makes it so jarring to see.

there has been a trans character established in game previously, there is already a precedent for these identities to exist in this world, and they have never used this language before. the way Iron Bull talked about Krem felt far more realistic and integrated into the world of Thedas comparatively. was it perfect? no, of course not, but i chafe at the idea that it needs to be perfect, anyways. this is another problem the game has; past characters have had their flaws completely ironed out (Isabela is now a paragon of friendship and returns cultural artifacts instead of looting them, Dorian has multiple codex entries wallowing about how he used to defend slavery, the Crows have suddenly become a big found family-- on and on and on) and while i have my criticisms of some of these flaws (Dorian's pro-slavery rant in inqusition still makes my eyes roll) i dislike the way they're handling these changes and just expecting us to ignore all of the lore and worldbuilding from previous games. and all of this "political correctness" only for the game to still be so racist.

which brings me back to Taash.... Taash is very strange character, lacking agency around both their gender and their culture. they are simply a mouthpiece for the writer. while yes, it should always be made undeniable that your character is trans or gay or xyz, Taash really does only exist to be nonbinary. and to be clear, a nonbinary character like them could be very interesting, if their writing wasnt so... white. we know that the Qun has different ideas about gender than Rivain (and elsewhere) and this could have been a very interesting exploration of that; however, it is obvious that the Qun (and Taash's mother) are meant to be depicted negatively, and ultimately it ends with the player (not Taash) choosing between their two cultures. their gender is clearly far more important to the writer and the only facet of their identity they seemed willing to explore, which makes me question why even make this character qunari to begin with...

Neve and Rook are also the two that spur Taash into exploring their gender. this, on the surface, is not a problem for me. i'm playing as a trans Rook and while the dialogue was again very overpolished and clunky i found it kind of endearing. but the way Neve is used as this "foil" for Taash really rubbed me the wrong way. this assumption that Neve has no complicated feelings about her gender or being a woman (which i highly doubt considering the world she lives in & how misogynistic it is) and the implication from Taash that she only dresses the way she does for her mother/other people (which Neve doesn't even get to challenge) is extremely narrow-minded. Taash is the Only character that acknowledges gender; so far, even when flirting with other characters, it's only been Taash that i've been allowed to specify with that my rook is trans, despite Taash already knowing that from our previous conversation (i hope that this changes once i lock in with a specific character so feel free to correct me if it does).

but no one else really seems to have an opinion except that Neve drags Taash around to meet Maevaris, and we get the very goofy note that's just a list of modern gender identities and their definitions. i do partly sympathize with the writers here; again i've had to find a way to incorporate lgbt identities in my own writing and it can be difficult depending on your audience. i understand wanting to be very clear and concise. but this is... just goofy. and this desperation to be so correct around gender while simultaneously writing such an offensively racist narrative is really frustrating.

there's also an inconsistency that comes from this with Taash's character-- they are portrayed as this rough but awkward character that is bossed around by their mother, they are bashful with flirting early on and are almost child-like in comparison to the other characters. and then suddenly you get a scene with them where they very directly ask if you want to have sex and suddenly pin you against the wall. this scene was so jarring to me i referred to it as a jumpscare because WHERE has this character been this entire time? i want to see more of this, more of this character who takes what they want and knows exactly who they are (which they even say multiple times when you first meet them... but then need Neve and Rook to hold their hand about it?)

i do really like Taash, i like the idea of them, of this very self-assured and almost cocky character who is also a little silly, this person who is so sure of who they are but has to deal with their mother undermining them while also navigating a culture they feel disconnected from, and i also like that the player can help them through it... but the execution is awful, shallow, and racist. the idea that someone can only choose One culture is so offensive and also a laughable conclusion when compared to their coming out as nonbinary. the writer clearly understands that people don't exist within these little boxes when it comes to gender, but can't wrap their head around it when it comes to someone's culture-- which is also a very important part of a person's identity and often contributes directly to their gender and how they feel about it. all of these different characters have different experiences, come from different places, Davrin and Bellara are Dalish and even have differing opinions on what that means for themselves, but the game doesn't touch on any of it. all we get is a lecture from the writer that is completely removed from the world it's presented in.

i wish i could understand what it was this character was meant to convey. i stand by saying that it doesn't need to be perfect; i know there are people that had problems with Krem in inquisition, but at least Krem was his own person. Taash doesn't even get that here... i harp a lot about character agency when i give writing advice on my other blog but it really is so so so important for marginalized characters-- both gay, trans, and especially characters of color-- to have their own agency around their identities that is completely separate from the player & player choice, that allows them to exist as their own person within the world you've created, and i think Taash's character and story is an unfortunate example of exactly what not to do.

[cherchezlafatfemme]

Ok so we all realize this isn't *new* right? My Warden was using blood magic right in front of the Denerim Chantry, and my apostate Hawke was summoning lightning in Hightown. This sort of hand waving has been common in the series from jump, just look at the Origins quest to either escape or be rescued from Fort Drakon. It's very much rule of cool, and you can like it or not that's fine but let's not pretend the other games were any different.

[saintlethanavir]

Here's the thing. Why does Rook need to be the chosen one? Why can't people understand that Rook was another person helping Varric and that they stepped up when Harding was grieving??

Rook was chosen by accident.

Rook shed blood at the ritual site and Solas chose to use blood magic to bind them together and use Rook as a replacement. They were easily manipulated because they were in a position of grief.

Varric chose Rook to help because they were kind, in some fashion at least. They helped people, they wanted to keep people safe and had a passion for justice.

READ. THE. BACK STORIES.

[virginiathegray]

Watching creators across the internet yap themselves into hating this game for no reason is actually so sad

[thedissonantverses]

I’m so confused by the urge to judge Veilguard by like….what’s not in it? This happens every game cycle and it’s so bizarre to me. I didn’t get mad at ME3 for not going back to Noveria and having me do more corporate espionage. Ya know two different stories and all. Y’all should…try that. This isn’t the MCU.

That whole “Fenris would break Veilguard” thing is a good example of this type of critique.(Slavery exists in Minrathous in game it’s not game breaking. I know this because I….played the game and saw them. Can we be done with this argument already?) I romanced him and I was so relieved he was nowhere near Inquisition or Veilguard because look at what happened to Hawke. He wasn’t in the story because he didn’t need to be that’s seriously it. Or not having Solas have an elf army. Or I think a more recent one is that Lucanis isn’t an abomination so there’s no abominations? (I’ll be honest the premise failed on contact and I’m too gay for this southern chantry b.s. term Black Divine truther over here)

This game gave you a ton of new things to enjoy. It didn’t scrub the lore by doing so. In fact, the lore is woven so tightly into it you can’t pick the seams out. A story focusing on the part of the world it is set in is not a sanitization of the lore. That’s not how world-building works. This is a basic tenet of engaging with large worlds in fiction. Also how Earth works. Just saying. The rest of Thedas is still there. I mean we’re not gonna see anymore of it if you keep nitpicking the game to death but hey at least we got four good Dragon Age games that’s a good run.

P.S. Critique the game. Just do it based off what it is and not shit that doesn’t need to be in it because it would have made it worse.

[herald-divine-hell]

Can’t wait in a few years for Veilguard to be the “quiet gem” of the DA fandom, and how it was actually a secret masterpiece, especially if there is any other future dragon age projects.

[postcardsfromheapside]

This is why I can't take this fandom seriously.

Taash is in their very early 20's. They are not a “thousands of years old being who speaks in iambs” or whatever the fuck it is that Solavellans gush on about. Not a goddamn thing they say is “crap” - it's short, it's to the point, it's very often funny as fuck because it pulls no punches. It serves as comedic punctuation very often simply because they don't have the patience for other people's bullshit.

I never see specifics as to what people find cringey and I suspect it's because people are uncomfortable with Taash's identity, or CONSTANTLY forget they are 20-23. And holy shit the cringe things everyone says at that age.

Taash is remarkable and mature for their age, an expert in their favorite subject, and recognized as such by people much older than them, who literally put their lives in Taash's hands regularly. I think Taash is allowed a few moments to be weird and 20 once in a fucking while without people coming for Trick and gurgling on about inconsistent writing.