#i needed to read this today my god

[iholli]

sobbing I read the J'onn-centric JLTAS book and my god I love him

likes alone time on occasion, much as he enjoys the League's company, but also won't ask the others not to bother him bc he doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings

[also it absolutely is a little disappointing to him when he gets left on the Watchtower alone. he wants to help but also he would like a little company? please?]

doesn't like plays bc he just sees right through the actors and if they're not genuinely emotional, he doesn't understand the purpose

human minds are LOUD and very intrusive and he often has to actively block them out. it happens a lot whether J'onn wants to hear them or not. [throwback to my long ass essay and this basically confirming everything I said]

again. man does not like plays. quantum physics >>>

trying to understand things about humans gives him an actual headache. he can't with us fr

can impersonate not just the League but also their powers quite well, even without being able to replicate them

but shapeshifting takes a LOT out of him. like, they hit this pretty hard in the comics, but it takes a LOT a lot. becoming intangible is no issue however.

he's silly. oh my god. he got distracted trying to read / understand Hamlet and didn't put away the device he was literally on the Watchtower to guard. the Injustice Gang showed up and J'onn really went ah fuck and shoved the device under his bed.

it worked btw

worth noting that this book really lets you in on how low J'onn's power level is. like he's extremely susceptible to every attack so DCAU nerfing him is very real. he almost blacks out multiple times during fights and it takes an incredible amount of concentration to do, like, pretty much everything aside from the telepathy, intangibility, and flight. but he's extremely smart to make up for it :] and again. very silly. and great at being sarcastic. 💖

[xxplastic-cubexx]

[right to left]

finally finished This Wip from Ever ago and so now i ask you ever look into another dudes eyes and suddenly want to do whatever he wants

[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.

[lunarharp]

hehe. almost christmas!

[ask-the-druggieverse]

Who out of everyone eated the drugs the most?? Takes-ed em' Inhalation. Do any of thems takes its together????

- ALT - EDIBLES SWAP: Please don't overdose on edibles SWAP: it's not a healthy coping mechanism (Has heart problems and fatigue now)

POT Dust takes it in consideration (1-4 days), usually when he needs/wants to to chill/relax Horror does pot everyday

HIGH TOGETHER FRESH: Sometimes I join them FRESH: Tho... it's sad that they can no longer become sober

- IDK - If Error and Ink ever become sober the cannabis hangover will be CRAZY (dang forever weed brownie and forever weed paint...)

EDIT: My dumb dumb forgot to add a little message for Swap saying he's sober now :skull:

MAIN: @inkyu

Back | Start | Next

[farceargon]

"He was alight with eyes, replete with arms that continued to tear from the ground and his own body, and stained with fluorescent blood and pus that poured down him in glowing rivulets. Insectoid legs, patterned like ribs, curled against his chest and ripped into an obvious, drooling seam that cut through the center of his body."

"His face was fuller and less skeletal, domed and long and divided into sections by snapping jaws that flared out like a star, each deformed by massive teeth that grew like ram’s horns from his mouth. A mane of tentacles whipped violently around his head and slithered down his back, excess arms and quills forming a halo behind him that traced a crown of spiraling blue-green fire."

-

Benrey's true form from @kogo-dogo 's fic, Human Resources Violation. Hey actual banger.

I REALLY LIKE THIS FIC. If you like HLVRAI you NEEEEEED to read it so bad. I stayed up all night making this and regret nothing. I cannot believe the fic ended with one of my most beloved things in existence (eldritch kaiju battle).

-

Without dramatic lighting below the cut.

[b4kuch1n]

hahaha wheee haha

[bookishjules]

i haven't started nightfall yet (the 13yo i babysit said have fun reading it in a way that made me fear for my life) but i pulled it out of my backpack and got lost staring at the cover and now here i am already in tears because of the way keefe is looking at sophie and i havent even opened the damn book..

[torchickentacos]

If anyone else's windows device taskbar has been giving them too much world health news and prompting anxiety spirals, you can turn this thing off:

by right-clicking any blank part of the task bar, hitting this:

and turning this off.

Signed, 'oh my god I already mask indoors every day and live in constant fear of my jacked up immune system leading to my untimely demise, please stop telling me about fun new diseases'.

[hidey-writes]

wip wednesday

There’s a quiet murmur of sound in the room, movement and conversation. Gu Yiran waits, lets it wash over him until he can make sense of it. Two people speaking in low voices, the occasional lilt into a question before the sound dips back down into [murmuring]. Ding Guozhu, and Zhang Xiaoguang. The quiet metal sound of a thermos opening, and Ding Guozhu’s voice cuts out for a moment.  Zheng Bei’s voice isn’t there.  Neither is Yaoyao’s, Gu Yiran reminds himself.   It’s only that — The last thing Gu Yiran remembers, concretely, with any certainty, is Zheng Bei. The look on Zheng Bei’s face, bursting in through the door, the way his expression changed when he saw Gu Yiran, something almost frantic in his eyes. The very last thing Gu Yiran remembers is the shape of Gu Yiran’s name in Zheng Bei’s mouth — not Gu-laoshi, for once, but Gu Yiran. To Gu Yiran’s right, the door to the hospital room unlatches.  Ding Guozhu and Zhang Xiaoguang’s conversation quiets as the door swings open. First, Yaoyao’s voice, “I bet you’re all starving! Lao Jiu—” and then footsteps coming toward Gu Yiran’s hospital bed, too light and quick to be Zheng Bei’s. There’s a hurried shushing from the corner. The door closes too fast to admit a second person.  Gu Yiran’s eyes are already open. He’s already disappointed.

from the third draft! hopefully the penultimate draft - at least the one scene i have drafted feels like it's only about a draft worth of revision from being done, so i'm optimistic. i'm trying a new thing where i am simultaneously constructing the "outline" / very chaotic list of events by scene for the third draft while also starting to write it. i think i'm liking it so far.

[grian-updates]

Grian is in Jimmy's latest video!

[fncreature]

So. updated theory after 1. rewatching some of Kenadian’s other videos and 2. seeing the but there was more video (thank you @brain-empty) I rewatched the last couple videos in the Omziscool saga, to try and figure out the lore, and oh boy did that help. Here’s my previous theory post, which does relate. (Oh, and here’s the timeline order playlist I made)

After Kenadian kills Omz in the hopper prison video, he gets the Omz mask. From the train escape, and an unlisted video in his lore playlist, it’s shown that he goes on a massive hopper rampage, destroying a large city before… something happens. He wakes up in a cell, with little memory, and the mask is gone with no explanation.

But Kenadian isn’t the only important character found in those videos. In the train escape, one of the guards, is Wato1876. Yes, seriously. It’s entirely possible that during Kenadian’s rampage, a guard or player- Wato- killed him and helped imprison him. And unknowingly, obtained the Omz mask in the process.

EDIT BECAUSE I FORGOT TO MENTION THIS: Wato does not have the mask on in the train escape video. This is either because it was an oversight and they didn’t think the lore would go this far, or I was completely wrong. I think it’s an oversight, as I don’t think they had plans to take it further until this april fool’s joke.

Here’s where I go completely into theory. I think that the Omz Mask takes the characteristics or some memories of the previous wearer. Kenadian would never go on a hopper rampage of his own volition- he hates hoppers. But Omziscool loves hoppers- they give him power. And it also makes the wearer lack great decision making skills, which Omz is notorious for not thinking through better options. So, once Kenadian gets the mask, he goes on a blind rampage, not thinking through any better solutions. So, then, what happens to Wato? Well, what would Kenadian do? He’d play the long game. He’d think through his options, and play his escape room long game.

That’s where Evil Wifies comes in. The two meet at some point, and he’s still Wato- he can still make good escape maps. And Evil Wifies, is, well, evil. Wato is a knowing participant- but only because of the mask. So, he creates these escape maps for Evil Wifies, until Evil Wifies gets a bit more power hungry- and decides he wants the Omz mask. This is all about power- he creates the clones to make content, for the viewers. It’s only a show if he can get people to watch it. And Evil Wifies is smart- he knows, surely, the mask has drawbacks. He can see them in Wato. So, he makes some sort of agreement that sounds fair, and using one of the smarter clones and slaying Wato for the Omz mask, Omz Mask Wifies is created. All this occurs during the later stages of development of the map made for the debunk. Omz Mask Wifies finishes off the map.

This explains the behavior of Omz Mask Wifies in the prologue- Wato built the escape room. But he can remember bits of it, just the mostly finished version that Wato remembers.

What happens to Wato? I’m not sure. Likely, he has very foggy memories of the entire thing, as seen in the epilogue. He likely stayed a bit longer with Evil Wifies, helping with the rest of the escape room. We can’t be sure what happens after that.

Now, the but there was more video. I honestly have no explanation for what Kenadian is doing there or how he finds it. But from what I can tell, it’s all of the rooms from Wifies’ previous escape maps put together, along with additional rooms in the same style. This takes place after the epilogue, and at some point in between the two videos, Omz Mask Wifies is killed. It’s the same skin- the Wifies body with the Wato ears, but there’s no mask. What happens to him now, we don’t know. Most likely, he was killed by Evil Wifies, but there’s no evidence to support that.

Here’s what I think the timeline is:

-Omziscool Fiasco

-Kenadian gets the mask after killing Omz

-Kenadian goes on a destructive rampage after getting possessed by the mask and is killed by Wato, who is a guard, and sent to prison. 

-Train escape video

-Wato, who now has the mask, and Evil Wifies somehow meet, and Evil Wifies and Wato start working together, creating escape rooms for the Wifies clones.

-Evil Wifies and Wato create Omz Mask Wifies during the later stages of development for the last escape map.

-Prologue (Except the lore bits)

-Main two videos

-After Evil Wifies’ death in the trivia Omz Mask Wifies is sent into the escape room.

-Epilogue, and prologue lore bits

-Omz Mask Wifies is killed, losing the mask

-but there was more occurs

And, a quick summary of all the characters:

Kenadian: Gets the mask after killing Omz, goes on a rampage, is slain by Wato and then escapes from prison transport. At some point after the epilogue, he finds the massive structure of escape rooms

Wato: Is a prison guard before killing Kenadian after his destructive rampage and is a guard on the train as Kenadian escapes. Evil Wifies and Wato meet somehow, and strike some sort of agreement in which Wato is under his control. At some point in the design process for the escape room in the main videos, Omz Mask Wifies is created and, while no longer having the mask, likely helps finish off the map before he’s somehow found by Wifies and Kenadian and questioned in the epilogue.

The Wifies

Wifies: A clone, created by Evil Wifies. There’s not much more to him other than what happens in the main video.

Evil Wifies: ??? No idea who he is or what his lore is. He creates clones to solve escape rooms created by Wato for content. He works with Wato for almost all of the known lore, and creates Omz Mask Wifies to have full control over the Omz Mask. After dying in trivia, he sends Omz Mask Wifies through the map.

Omz Mask Wifies: Oh boy. Everything about this guy is my own speculation. Created by Evil Wifies and Wato for… something? Likely so Evil Wifies can control the Omz Mask without the other issues the Omz Mask causes. Is sent through the escape room after Evil Wifies is killed. At some point after this, he is killed, losing the mask.

Is all of this entirely speculation and probably wrong?

Absolutely. There are so many things I still have questions about. I’m fairly certain Omz Mask Wifies and Wato are two seperate characters (discussed in my previous post about this), but if that’s true, why does Wato say that he “remembers the sunrise. The escape room was already done”? Who killed Omz Mask Wifies? It was likely Evil Wifies, but why? How does Kenadian get to the place in ‘but there was more’, and why is he out in the middle of the void? What does the Omz Mask even do?

I’m still very confused.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

I really love how you portray how much Erik loves having Charles use his telepathy on him. He's like yeaaa let my hubby penetrate my mind while I penetrate his bo– *anon gets mindwipe*

I DIDNT EVEN THINK OF CHARLES USING ERIKS OWN POWERS TO RESTRAIN HIM WAAAAAAIT your mind ………….. just opened a whole new door to perverted possibilities thank you ………

[tizzymcwizzy]

ladies and gentlemen and nonbinaries there is another blonde boy in my collection.....

[kaisollisto]

[vulpinesaint]

it’s like. i love being trans. and also if there was a loving god he wouldn’t do this to me