#inwiz

[kagrenacs]

what train mod are you talking about? they reposted your art?

Oh the Thomas the tank engine dragon replacer. I don’t really care about that tbh, that was several years ago

[boethiah]

Deshaan anon, and you've COMPLETELY misread my point, which can probably be attributed to the character limit in askboxes being a hell to navigate. Almalexia does not come across as a nagging bitch to me and I do not mind women telling me what to do. I'm saying that many men do, that ESO is written on tropes that appeal to those mindsets, and that the author's intention probably WAS for "you" to feel that way, the same way it was for you to like vivec and sotha sil -- even if we don't. -

….. I know that was long, sorry, but basically my point is that almalexia the character is not bad, she is not a bitch or whatever, and how i interpret her she’s justified and human and good – my issue with her writing in deshaan and eso in general is that i cant shake the feeling that the AUTHOR wants me to hate her, and it feels jarring. (10/10, rest of anons under cut)

OH. oh. i think i see where you’re coming from.

tl;dr: core eso had a different direction and different writers than the later dlcs. the later dlcs did in fact do almalexia so dirty but i played core eso before those dlcs came out and in that context deshaan isn’t so bad, and at least they didn’t butcher her like they did vivec and sotha sil.

first of all, i totally agree with you, that she’s written like the writers don’t like her! especially if you take ESO as a whole. morrowind and CWC dlc in particular are egregious offenders, and i will get to how those dlcs did almalexia dirty, because holy shit. BUT

i don’t think you can take ESO’s writing as a monolith. the writers and the direction have changed significantly since the games first came out. because of this, i honestly consider ‘core’ ESO (alliance questlines + coldharbour) to be an entirely different game from the later chapters/dlc. between the core game and the morrowind chapter there was a steep change in direction and a steep decline in writing quality, and it really shows in how the tribunal was approached. i played deshaan long before morrowind and cwc came out, so i didn’t have those dlcs to sour me or make me doubt the intentions of the writers, especially since the rest of the game was so well-done– that probably lead to me giving deshaan a much more generous interpretation than i might have if i played when the dlcs existed.

so on my particular, core-ESO-only interpretation: i still think the deshaan writing was fair, and in line with what the core game wanted to do with almalexia. they approach her very critically, yes, but it didn’t feel at all harsh to me, especially in a game that thrives off its morally-grey protagonists (look at ayrenn, varen, lalorian dynar, even abnur– core eso does a morally-grey character so well). again, taking deshaan as its own segment of the core games only, they handled almalexia fantastically– she can appear harsh, and in deshaan she is harsh! the game challenges her and challenges the player to question her, they want you to doubt her and criticize her. but that’s neither unfair nor hateful, imo, and ultimately she’s still a major force behind the pact and responsible for a lot of good. the rest of the core games reinforce this, with gil-var-delle and the pact and references to her. 

but morrowind and clockwork city have entirely different writers, and a different direction, to the core games. mainly those dlcs were basically written to pander to morrowind fanboys– the r/teslore users, the MK devotees, the tr*inwiz fans, the ones who really do think almalexia is a nagging bitch– and pander they did. they didn’t want you to criticize or question or challenge the tribunal the way core eso did. and those two dlcs absolutely did undermine almalexia, they did want you to hate her, they either tried to completely erase her (morrowind) or literally disparaged her while handing off her most notable accomplishments to sotha sil (clockwork city). it was atrocious, and the hatred the writers of those dlcs have for her is blatant.

and don’t get me wrong, i absolutely despise how morrowind and cwc treat her!! i hate that the marketing team got so much say and that the game bowed so steeply to that sort of fan, whereas core eso had received harsh criticism from the r/teslore crowd and didn’t cater to them so much (when ESO first came out it actually received so much flack from r/teslore, and even came into conflict with MK himself a few times, lol). the writers of those dlcs really do want you to hate her and if you played them before deshaan i can totally get why you’d think “the writers” hate her. but this is ESO. “the writers” change.

but i never got the feeling that deshaan was pandering to anyone. deshaan treats her as harshly and as fairly as it treats any other main ESO character (like, find me a king or leader in core eso who isn’t challenged by the questlines, really). she isn’t someone’s flagrant self-insert like eso’s sotha sil is, nor a caricature like eso’s vivec. she’s just a good flawed character.

which leads us to the other reason i’m willing to defend deshaan– it’s not morrowind or clockwork city. holy shit, look what they did to vivec and sotha sil in the dlcs. they BUTCHERED those characters. deshaan has its flaws but can you imagine if the current writing team tried to tackle almalexia? holy fuck. no thank you. i’m counting my blessings and thanking the gods of video game dudebros that my fave was in the core games instead, lol. leamon tuttle do NOT interact.

(rest of original anon under cut:)

I’m saying that the whole quest feels like the writer dislikes almalexia and wants you to dislike her. I’m not talking about stonefalls (which is good, but brief) or other quests that could’ve well been handled by other writers, I’m talking specifically about her appearance in deshaan. You can personally interpret events as you like and fill out holes with lore and hcs but I do think it’s on purpose that the other npcs in the quest don’t seem to like her, that you get -

- way more options to question her decisions than you do with the male tribunals, and that while her execution of an evil daedric cultist is justified, having her kill a son in front of a grieving, begging mother who had a somewhat personal relationship with her was not there to make ALMALEXIA seem sympathetic. There absolutely is an authorial intent behind making you ask why she doesn’t deal with the issue herself and why she isn’t responding in some witty cute oneliner like king whatever did -

- in his quest. And when you look at what new (and old) lore says about the other two tribunal members it IS frustrating to see that she basically says she doesn’t want to risk dealing with the cultists because she worries what they can do and how it makes her look. Yes, PR is important but PR is not deception. You SAY she could take care of the cultists but she’s basically admitting that she fears losing or being humiliated and so she sends in you instead. - I do think that’s absolutely in line with the push to take away almalexia’s strength and accomplishments. When you have Sotha Sil bargain with daedra, recreate the heart of lorkhan, predict his own death, vivec playfully rewriting reality, whatever, almalexia - in comparison - being nervous about common cultists is not good writing for her IMO. She’s not bigleaging you telling you to deal with it, she admits worry. -

And when you get a quest that has NPCs that preface her appearance by talking about how she’s a bummer, spends more time making the main villain sympathetic, makes almalexia appear cold and curt, and concludes that she is not sure if she can take the threat on (while simultaneously talking about how she’s a god) is writing that is MEANT to make her unsympathetic, especially to dumbass men who DO hate it when women tell them what to do and probably feel like theyre the competent ones there -

- while almalexia is the asshole manager or bureaucrat or whatever trope you want to go with that just barks orders at the real hero without being able to solve the issue themselves. And I think this is a symptom of a greater issue with eso’s almalexia, which is that they try to entirely define her character by the last act of her life in morrowind. She goes angry, she kills people, she turns harsh and tyrannical – this is supposed to be development following the loss of her divinity -

- but ESO (and cwc especially) really hammers home the point that almalexia is harsh and tyrannical and a liar, and WILL totally go violent and no one who knows her really likes her in the dunmer quests. She has PR, sure, but here it feels more like deception, and undeserved praise. Sotha Sil, the asshole, already knows her for the violent murderer and treats her as such. Vivec keeps his distance. Her appearance is relatively cold and harsh, formal. You don’t feel like she’s the mother of mercy- - save for that stonefall mention and like, maybe her tear grenades. It feels like they want to paint her as rigid and unpleasant, a ticking timebomb everyone is just waiting to explode. And I think that’s a huge disservice to her. She’s the most competent warrior in the tribunal so it’s fine to be harsh at times but I never felt like she was portrayed as a compassionate or beloved ruler as much as just the writers hating her and wanting her to be seen as a soon-to-be villain.