#like we still could have kept the 'gods/empires/oppressive authorities' theme without making it as egregiously racist as it was....

[bonesaints]

tho i've been out of the writing/fic game for years, i feel like i might as well write fix it fic for the events of vei/lguard. the elves and the qunari are mine now. same with a certain woofwoof aroo, i'm fucking filing for custody at this point lmgdaoo

while i really enjoyed the game, i have major critiques of it. i hate to say this, but i'm gonna be real with yall: i could've handled the qu/nari and elv/es exponentially better if i'd written it myself.

never minds the complete sanitization of the cr/ows and the sanitization of tevinter, the l/ords of f/ortune (rip isabela....queen i am SO fucking sorry they did this 2 u), and this is an extremely minor nitpick compared to the others, but 'good' sol/avellan ending; it is really NOT the solmanon reunion i wanted. objectively speaking as a writer/person whose masters degree studies focused on hyperanalyzing the structures of narratives in media, i feel like SO much of sol/as's agency as a character was brutally stripped from him, and for what? and honestly i don't even wanna talk about the anta/am, it felt like they had the anta/am break away from the q/un in order to justify the blatantly racist and horrific portrayal of them as if the approach of "see? theyre the bad guys, they dont reflect on the rest of the q/un or the q/unari as a whole" somehow excuses it all. same shit they do with the el/ves with the "we're gonna make them LOOK whyte so that this isn't racist, never mind that they are narratively positioned as poc and are otherwise coded as such."

also, the fact that you have the save the shitty slavery racism city in order to get "the good ending" where as many ppl as possible survive is so fucking bizarre to me... and never mind the fakeout scares of them almost killing dav/rin like 3-5 times.... damn.

the way his relationship w my/thal was executed in the game just felt rushed and ill considered. like i can see what they're getting at, there are definitely some good ideas here, but the execution was horrendous and the final product gave the most hollow, detached, dispassionate third wheel vibes i think i've ever seen in a vidja game protag romance. not to mention they wrote his character in the most bizarre and contradictorily jarring manner to how he was established in in/quisiton?? he insists that neither he nor the ev/anuris are gods, yet in one of the endings, he's practically frothing at the mouth telling r/ook that "they're just a mortal, and i'm...." (you know the words ''i'm a god'' are on the tip of his tongue.) ik we can explain a lot of his dialogue inconsistencies with "oh well he lies a lot" but in this case, such a blatant contradiction of a character's defining ideals is just a hallmark of poor quality.

i suppose i shouldn't expect anything less from ppl who originally made him a bisexual man of colour but then decided that was Too Much so they made him het and whyte, but Damn.

also, we didn't even really get to see the a/gents of fe/n'harel????? where is all the exposition that was set up in tevinter nights?? WHERE ARE THE OTHER ANCIENT ELVES???? i know b/ioware drops the ball on plots/narratives a lot but this felt sloppy and inexcusable. to say nothing of the deeply shitty responses they've had to ppl critiquing stuff even in good faith.