#maybe with aveline as well?

[teecupangel]

Hello! I just discovered you recently, dived headfirst into several your fics and am so in love with them. I'm also incredibly grateful because I'm in the middle of putting a house on the market and your fics are saving my sanity. My most recent read is 'Ouverture', and I love bitter, slightly elitist and secretly disdainful Desmond. Now I have so many questions about Unity cannon (that you've cannonballed) if you wouldn't mind just head cannoning some future what if answers?

Does Arno return to France and get caught up in the revolution? Does Des come with and keep out of sight? IS Des considered a traitor by the Paris Assassins? Arno have an opinion on the Parisian Brotherhood? Does he have better Eagle vision since Des trained him? Do Paris Assassins read blue or white to him? Does he meet Elise again? What has become of the de la Serre family?

The French Revolution:

*random rooftop after absurdly flashy physics breaking move that avoided the lookout of five Paris Assassins*

Pierre: "Pisspot."

*arrogant eyebrow game at max and full permission from Des to be an asshole*

Arno: "0uncle Pierre."

Pierre. "Figured. Only one other who could hold eagle vision that easily to evade everyone with that stunt without breaking his neck. He would have kicked me as he flipped over my head."

Much love and thanks! And sorry for the long submission!

Hello! I’m so happy my fics were able to help you during such a hard time and please don't apologize. I love getting submissions and asks, no matter how long or short they are (although I am quite late in answering them TTATT). I hope selling your home is going well!

Okay, so let’s talk about the possible future of Ouverture and A New Way To Do Things in relation to Arno.

Arno will, of course, grow up in the homestead in this one. Unity officially starts 5 years after the end of AC3 when Arno is around 21 years old. Arno returns to France because he actually followed Desmond back to France (while Ratonhnhaké:ton and Clay had to stay behind for the Brotherhood and tells Desmond that they’ll catch up to him instead). Desmond returns because Lafayette requested their aid (he and Lafayette talked a lot during the American Revolutions as two French dudes doing whatever they can) and Desmond agreed to help his ‘motherland’.

This means that Desmond and Arno went back to France without the Parisian Brotherhood’s ‘approval’ so they’re going rogue (although Charlotte gets a visit and she cries because of how much Arno has grown).

Arno now calls Desmond ‘dad’ in this one too although he still calls Charles Dorian ‘father’ and they become embroiled in AC Unity’s plot as well, with Desmond having bad feelings because there’s something in Paris that just makes his skin crawl.

Desmond is sorta in a very precarious position in the Parisian Brotherhood, especially now that Sophie Trenet is a council member. A lot of the council members have a more forgiving stance on Desmond, especially after they hear how he helped Ratonhnhaké:ton take back the ‘colonies’ from the Templars but they’re not necessarily happy that he’s back. Sophie’s the one who is pushing for him to regain his old rank (not that Desmond wants it) though because she remembers him as being a good man and a great Assassin.

Desmond and Arno actually visits Bellec in prison and that’s how they reunite. Well…

That and the cannonball that ‘started’ the prison break…

Arno is officially a member of the American Brotherhood of Assassins (like Desmond) so he’s not thought of as a traitor but more like an outsider. Arno doesn’t mind though because his memory of France felt more like a distant dream. He doesn’t like to go to Versailles though.

Arno’s opinion of the Parisian Brotherhood is pretty much nonexistent. Desmond doesn’t like to talk about them, not even to complain about them. Other than say their ranking system is ridiculously long but Arno is pretty sure Desmond was being sarcastic (he was not).

Because of this, the Parisian Assassins appear as either blue (Bellec and Sophie) or white to him. They’re polite to him but also sorta cagey because he is not one of them as far as the Brotherhood is concern.

He does have a better Eagle Vision, one of the more advanced ones, actually, considering Desmond, Clay and Ratonhnhaké:ton trained him (and that means his Assassin style is a combination of his three instructors). The whole “I see their memories” thing Arno is also theorized by Clay as being a mutation caused by Arno’s close proximity to whatever Charles Dorian was carrying with him before he handed it off to another Assassin then returned to France to get his next (and last) mission. Clay believes that it’s some kind of POE and that it sorta mutated Arno’s Isu genes to be more prevalent in this case because he was still young when he was in it’s area of ‘influence’. Of course, that’s all guesswork and Arno just uses it to get more information.

Arno does meet Élise once more and it’s… well… it’s complicated.

While it’s highly possible that Arno would still hold a torch for Élise during that time, it is also highly possible that she would just be a distant memory, the kind girl whose parents may have had a hand on the death of his father (or so Desmond believed). Hell, if you want to add more drama in that front, it could be that Élise and Arno sees each other as ‘enemies’ this time around, their childhood memories being nothing more than the innocence of children that they could no longer go back to (especially with them no longer having any long history with one another so Arno sees Élise as a Templar gone rogue and Élise sees Arno as just another Assassin). (If you want to make it hurt, have Élise be the one to actually carry a torch for Arno while Arno had already fallen in love or may have already gotten married by the time he returns to Paris. To who? Ellen’s daughter Maria who becomes Arno’s childhood friend in the Davenport Homestead). Also, he’s seen as the older brother of Ratonhnhaké:ton’s children as well so, in many ways, Arno feels more at home at Davenport than he is in Paris while Élise’s father died because he couldn’t get the letter meant to warn him in time and she’s just full of anger and the burning desire for vengeance right now, with no one she can trust at all.

Also, also… Desmond has a reunion of his own to rival Arno’s Templar-connection past.

His aunt…

Madame Flavigny.

(Yeah, that’s right. The only person who knew Desmond as Antoine Faroy and his only living blood relative is a Templar, to be more exact, a Templar from the Radical Faction.)

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

I'm not ready to shut up about Aveline and Carver--so, when you go see Aveline in Act 1, you can catch up with her a little bit and that's where this conversation can happen:

Aveline: "It's just one more change, though. The real end for me was Ostagar. What about you, Carver? You were there. Do you feel something similar?" Carver: No. Aveline: All right, then. Bit of a tit, your brother.

I wanted to see what she would say if Carver isn't in the party. Instead, she says this:

Aveline: Carver was there. I imagine he feels something similar. If he allows it.

......well, at least she didn't call him a tit?

[wyllzel]

aw man i just started act 3 and everything feels so... sad ;_; how did we go from band of misfits on an indiana jones-style adventure (act 1) to steadfast friends with escalating problems but we trust one another (act 2) to varying-degrees-of-jaded friends who feel helpless in the face of a fascist takeover (act 3) ?! 😃

[echthr0s]

just magehawke tings

[vigilskeep]

baffled and vexed by instalment 3 of this fic having an obvious title. does that mean i have to title the rest of them. good lord

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

Q&A: Let's Have a Conclave!

Q: What happened to Pope Francis?

A: He got old and died.

Q: Why is your tag "#deadfrank 2k25"?

A: Because he died, he was called Francis (although his real first name was Jorge), and it's 2025.

Q: What's happening now?

A: The Catholic Church is preparing for a new Pope, who will be elected in a conclave, like from the noted book and movie Conclave. This conclave will be sometime between May 5 and May 10; what's going on until then is a series of funerary rituals and "general congregations," i.e. meetings of the cardinals to discuss their overall thoughts on what they might like to see for the Church when they start voting. The conclave is strictly secret but the general congregations aren't; however, the cardinals tend in practice to be cagey about both stages in the process. Cardinals who vote in the conclave itself have an age limit of eighty, but the general congregations are open to older cardinals as well.

Q: What are the important numbers to remember with the conclave?

A: The total number of cardinals voting is going to be somewhere in the low 130s; 135 are eligible, two said they couldn't make it for health reasons, and now it looks like one of those two might be able to make it after all, putting the current figure at 133 or 134. To get elected Pope you need two-thirds of that, which currently is either 89 or 90.

Q: Who's in charge in the meantime?

A: Kevin Farrell, the Camerlengo (chamberlain) of the Holy Roman Church, a frankly somewhat dislikeable old snake with an MBA who used to be Bishop of Dallas (yes, the one in Texas) before getting appointed to a central position in Rome.

Q: What is the next Pope going to be like?

A: Firm answer: Nobody knows.

My educated guess: It's going to be someone who continues a lot of Francis's priorities, but maybe not one of the big names and maybe not the priorities people in the First World tend to associate with him. The Western conservatives are alienating the sort of Global South wild cards they'd have to win over, and we're getting statements stressing continuity and finishing the work Francis started from people like Rwanda's Antoine Kambanda and Myanmar's Charles Maung Bo. These are people who are going to want to see more of Francis's informality, his populism, and probably his focus on climate action and poverty relief. What that would mean for women's or LGBT people's status in the Church could be almost anything, since plenty of people in the developing world with the above views are very socially conservative otherwise, but the full-on reactionaries seem pretty locked out.

Q: Who are some of the papabili ("pope-able") cardinals?

A: Tolentino de Mendonça, Tagle, Zuppi, Parolin, Grech, Prevost, López Romero, Aveline, Pizzaballa, Turkson, Arborelius, Ambongo, Ranjith, and Erdő are some of the names to look into here, listed vaguely from "left" to "right" (although these are tricky terms in this context and at least one voting cardinal, Malaysia's Sebastian Francis, avowedly thinks using them is a form of Eurocentrism). But it doesn't have to be one of them; in fact, it doesn't even have to be one of the cardinals voting; it just always is.

Q: Is he seriously named that?

A: Yes, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, the bishop responsible for (among other things) most Palestinian Christians, is really named Pierbattista Pizzaballa. I'm told it sounds silly even to native speakers of Italian.

Q: Is my fave [Tagle/Zuppi/Erdő if I have anyone like that following me/Pizzaballa/whoever] going to be Pope?

A: There's no one odds-on favorite, so probably not.

Q: Is my least fave going to be Pope?

A: See above.

Q: Who are you, monstrousgourmandizingcats, rooting for?

A: Zuppi, but it's not up to me.

Q: Is Kevin from Dallas a papabile?

A: Lmao no.

Q: Why are all these people men?

A: There ain't no rule that says a cardinal has to be a man, since a cardinal is technically a separate thing from a priest, but it would be very very difficult for all sorts of logistical and cultural reasons for a pope to actually appoint a woman as a cardinal, and not even Pope Francis ever seriously considered it. There is one woman, a nun called Simona Brambilla, who accidentally got an email inviting her to the general congregations because she's the head of a dicastery (a department of the Church's central government), but unfortunately she doesn't seem to have taken the mailing list up on it.

Q: Is the process fun to follow?

A: Very fun, yes, but also stressful for those of us who care a lot about the Church's direction.

Q: What's the talk among the cardinals focusing on so far?

A: According to Italian-language news, which is usually the most informed on this stuff, the big topics are migrant/refugee issues and how powerful the Church's central administration should be, not necessarily in that order.

Q: Any drama so far?

A: Yes! Angelo Becciu, a corrupt cardinal who resigned his right to sit in a conclave after a criminal conviction for fraud, had resignee's remorse, showed up for one of the general congregations, and had to be escorted out by the Swiss Guards. Kevin from Dallas got taken off Mass duty for (iirc) the sixth of the "Novemdiales" (nine days) of formal mourning for Pope Francis and they replaced him with Víctor Manuel Fernández, an Argentinian cardinal whom the right flank of the Church despises because he's the architect of kinda-sorta-if-you-squint allowing blessings of same-sex couples. Some conservative old guard cardinals supposedly descended on their safe deposit boxes for blinged-out gold pectoral crosses that Francis wouldn't let them wear while he was alive. I'm sure there's much much more to come!

[hawkepockets]

actually. 🫷😀🫸 THOUGHTS ON AVELINE

i think aveline is a CORE da2 character, and her relationship with hawke is super super interesting. she’s hawke’s oldest friend in the game & by act 3, maybe the only enduring connection to their homeland & childhood besides the mabari. her voice, her bearing, her stated values are all very noble & movingly fereldan—but her actions both as guard captain & as a party member should be so profoundly disappointing to hawke almost no matter how you play them, which generates a powerful tension. imo it’s really poignant and adds a lot to the game’s central tragedy.

because how can hawke cut her off! but look at how she behaves: ignoring the serial killing & sexual assault of isolated older women and elf girls, baiting the arishok, slut shaming isabela, condescending to merrill. but how can they cut her off? the question is a privilege and a torment!

in this way i think she strikingly complements gamlen. like no matter what gamlen does and says to you, your love interest, leandra, the surviving hawke twin—he’s family and the only way into kirkwall. hawke is not permitted to sever those ties. and no matter what aveline does and says to you and all the women in your party, she remains your oldest friend and the only way back to ferelden, emotionally.

both aveline & gamlen will maintain a warm relationship with hawke as long as hawke tolerates their picking on those in proximity to hawke—but if hawke pushes back with aggressive dialogue options, both will tone match and became sour and hostile. aveline can be really quite awful to a red hawke, and will throw them to the ground and beat them at 100% rivalry. so there’s kind of an underlying challenge in both of these characters: how much will hawke, as gang leader & player character, put up with when it’s not directed at them?

of course, for all the nostalgia that seems to occlude av’s wrongdoings in kirkwall, she’s not really a childhood friend of hawke’s. she was a grown woman when they met, lothering was lost, and the moment was pretty heated thanks to aveline’s hostile templar husband.

and yet hawke is no more reliable & objective in their treatment of the past than varric is. and aveline is what they have! she’s standing in for all of ferelden, all of the past before the blight!

and likewise hawke for her! hawke is the only one left in act 3 who remembers wesley! aveline is the only one who remembers the dead hawke twin!

and as reprehensible as some of her decisions are, aveline’s grief for wesley and her enmity toward the old corrupt guard captain are sympathetic and her voice is sexy and husky and beautiful enough that. well im sorry i just lost the plot for a minute. uh

there’s also the act 3 subplot of the templars trying to take over the city guard, which sets up aveline as the only thing standing between kirkwall’s mages & absolute templar authority in the city. it’s literally her or cullen at his most brainwashed & violent. (to cullen’s credit he also thought it was a bad idea. but i won’t give him so much credit that i believe he’d turn down the position if aveline was removed.) between a knight-commander and a hard place, a pro-mage hawke has to choose the hard place.

so both of my playthroughs i’ve felt like hawke’s friendship with her is at the very least strained, if not completely ruptured, but they have to back her. how much that feels like fucking sandpaper may vary from hawke to hawke.

ultimately i just think she brings a lot to the table. i don’t necessarily understand why she’d be anyone’s all time #1 favorite companion, but you know.

[postcardsfromheapside]

When you complain "if only X character had writers who loved them," what do you mean? 

Like what you do actually mean. 

I'm about to go on a rant about a particular character I see this about MOST, but this question is definitely not limited to him - I've seen it about multiple characters.

What is it you want from Anders and the writers. Because what it feels like from the posts where I see this phrase, is that people wanted Anders to be avenged in DA:I, or even Veilguard - for some of the characters to admit that maybe he was correct. Or maybe for there to be codex entries, SOMETHING that would hint that the mad apostate who blew up the chantry was justified. 

Except Dragon Age isn't like that. 

This entire series is about people who do awful things because they think they had a reason to do them, and sometimes those awful acts are completely understandable and maybe you can even justify them in context, but that in no way means that the in-world characters *have* to forgive anyone for anything, and the writers don't have to write them that way, no matter how they feel about the character. 

(I already have heard shitty things about Anders' writer, so before you @ me, please know, I'm composing this A of all, already understanding that context and B, also knowing that sometimes writers create characters who give offense on purpose, and that it's okay to like those characters without justifying their actions. Solas, anyone?) 

It's actually really frustrating as someone who is an Anders fan to see people whine "oh, if only he had a writer who loved him" as if he isn't a well-written character. 

The man is obsessive, annoyingly focused on his goals, constantly leaving bits of his unwanted manifesto everywhere. He's shitty to Fenris (although Fenris starts a lot of it and gives as good as he gets), and he probably deserved the moniker Broody as much as Fenris did. He's harsh to Merrill and quite often an unprompted asshole to Aveline. He's also incredibly kind and compassionate, and really does spend almost all of his free time living his truth: trying to save mages from terrible treatment which is only growing worse - most of which we do not see on-screen so shallow viewing doesn't make it seem quite as bad as he claims. He also freely gives of his healing talents, regardless of who comes asking, at great personal risk. Whatever you say about him, you can't claim he doesn't live what he says he believes. And then there's the fact that he's actually quite funny, and when his "moods" aren't on him, his banter with Varric and Merrill especially is very cute, hinting that there's a different person inside of him, had he not gone through everything he had since Awakening (maybe even before). If you romance him, he's passionate and caring and weirdly funny with Hawke as well, two freaks who "get" each other. 

Strange that I've managed to pull all of this out of someone who apparently the writers "didn't love", this rounded character who has multiple facets to him. 

No one in DA:I is required to forgive Anders, regardless of which storyline you take. Varric sees him as the man who blew up a portion of "his" beloved city, who got a LOT of people killed, and maybe effectively exiled his friend. Cassandra and Leliana, for all their wishes to reform the chantry, still believe in the chantry as an institution. Vivienne still believes in the circles. Solas doesn't give a flying fuck about that guy - mage freedom isn't really on his mind, except in that he's pretending to be an apostate until he sheds his disguise. Who were you expecting to exonerate Anders, exactly, with their own limited perspectives? 

To be honest, I wouldn't have forgiven him either, except in that I too have lived in a world where people's rights were slowly being stripped away by an unempathetic crazy person and the governing body that could have stopped the clown in office collectively sat back and in the end did fuck all about it. 

You're meant to think about these things, just like you're meant to think about the stuff going on in Veilguard on which people have been posting metas. Is Bioware ham fisted at this commentary? 100% But it's there. Otherwise I wouldn't have seen so many good character analyses of Anders (and other characters I've seen this complaint about). 

"If only he had writers who loved him" my sibling in Thedas they did their job, you're out here on this cloutless website crying into the void about your favorite little guy. Now go figure out why you need him to be a hero within the story itself, instead of him existing as he is and you thinking about how many people have flawed or shaded perspectives about the people who try, in different and sometimes awful ways, to change history.

[hungee-boy]

playing her at the beginning is going to be so funny when varric acts like her didnt house and raise her as a niece for a decade in kirkwall while her father, his estranged former coworker, backpacks across thedas killing slavers and only coming back for weeks at a time when hes injured or theres no leads for him to follow

lol

i think its decided that my second rook is gonna be my teenage fenhawke baby

[sapphim]

Anyway. I know I'm regularly very mean about Aveline but I do believe all the seeds are there. The tension between the high-minded moral authority she's clearly invested in seeing herself as and the reality—that she's self-interested in an "I got mine" sort of way in the well-being of her immediate circle to the exclusion of the city-at-large... there's good stuff to work with there, and it's perfectly on theme. She was totally in favor of extrajudicial justice for rapists in Act 1 and that all evaporated into thin air by Act 2 when it was the reputation of her guards on the line. If she ever had to confront that she like so many others had become queen corrupt hypocrite of fuck shit mountain and then resolve to do something about it. Then we'd be cooking. Instead we got the Aveline appreciation hour in Act 3 where her super bestie cleared all charges of do-nothingism against her by asking her husband if she was in fact too super niceys or if she was maybe the best captain of all time perhaps. Deeply unserious.

[sha-brytols]

see i think he's right in that there is no actual discernable line between Anders and Justice but i think it's a little bit more complex than that because. well obviously we see moments where justice just straight up takes control of anders body like in the fade or the quest with ser alrik or his rivalry path. but i also feel like a lot of the things anders says and does is not entirely just him. like.

okay so justice has a very distinctive style of speech. very verbose. rarely (if ever) uses contractions. has a very declarative style and frequently speaks in terms of absolutes. "It was your condemnation of their race that led to your folly" and "This is a mortal body of flesh! I am trapped within!" it's a very similar, albeit less poetic, manner of speech to that of cole's. their mannerisms are very reminiscent of someone whose grasp of communication is limited to the abstract (if that makes sense.?) so their speech feels unique in that it's more visceral and conveys a certain Feeling in the player. while cole's is more flowery and evocative, justice's speech is direct and forceful.

and as we know anders in awakening, he talks more casually, much more carefree, upbeat, very informal and uses more colloquialisms in his speech. "Erm... i didn't do it?" and "Whoa. She's talking to me. Voluntarily." he's literally the most unserious man in the world and honestly talks more like the class clown from your college frat party than a fantasy wizard.

i think this is most apparent when you see him and justice talking to each other:

justice is very no-nonsense and straightforward and really super does not fucking appreciate anders' cheeky attitude, while anders is borderline obnoxious and seems to enjoy being a smartass for the fun of it.

so like. in da2 we know that for the Most part, the smarm and glibness has been very toned down and anders is now more somber and subdued. he's also become more romantic (both in the literal sense as well as in the literary sense) and idealistic. he seems to have settled in a middle ground between polite and familiar and his tone is less playful and more earnest. he's also become a lot more respectful with how he talks about religion, compared to how he casually wonders if andraste was actually ugly or something in awakening (interesting thing to note: we know for a fact that justice actually believes in the maker and also has a deep respect for mortal faith)

so my personal interpretation of the justice/anders dynamic is that they kind of exist on a spectrum of sorts. one side being "mostly anders" and the other side being "mostly justice" with his default state being right smack in the middle. something that immediately stuck with me when i got it was anders' reaction in aveline's act 2 quest

maybe i'm insane and overthinking it but. this is just such a fucking abnormal response to a cute goofy "oh no how do i get this guy to like me?!" conversation that i can't not immediately think. hi justice.

her banter i think also provides a pretty perfect example of this

hi justice ^_^

hi anders ^_^

so my interpretation has always been that like. while i do believe for the most part they are genuinely "one" as anders claims, it's pretty clear to me that there is still a small divide between them, but it's more like in the way purple is always a mix of red and blue, but sometimes purple is more blue than red. and sometimes it's more red than blue. they aren't entirely separate from one another, but you can clearly see which is the strongest at any given time.

am i making sense. is anyone here. can you hear me. hello

[notebooks-and-laptops]

We all know that the real reason you hate Veilguard is that non-white people have agency and power in the story, unlike your precious BG3 fetishizing racism. Imagine you giving a shit about the fact that Karlach's story is incomplete because Sven Vincke believes that oppressed minorities deserve racist abuse.

Okay so obviously this ask wasn't sent in good faith (and bizzare considering Karlach, Lae'zel and Wyll are my favs in Bg3 and I've been outspoken about disappointment in their treatment by Larian compared to Astarion but I digress). But it has prompted an interesting thought because....

What agency do characters (any, but especially our non-white as anon has pointed out) have in Veilguard? I think of any RPG (maybe even any videogame?) the Veilguard companions have the LEAST agency I've seen.

All RPGs involve an element of helping to decide your companions fate; will Merrill smash the mirror or keep it? Will Isabela come back? Will Alistair become a warden, a king or a drunk? Will Leliana let ruthlessness or compassion rule her? And how you play does effect this; often there are important choices at certain moments.

I think these decisions in general work better when they're slowly built up over a number of choices (e.g. Leliana in DAI, who will be divine) or come from approval/disproval (Merrill smashing the mirror if she feels she has nobody on side vs. keeping it if she feels she has you at her back). This is because in these situations the characters are not just asking what to do to the player they are influenced by numerous situations and circumstances and that effects the decisions they make.

But veilguard...well. the approval system doesn't exist. None of the companions can hate or dislike Rook, they can only like you to various degrees of intensity. So that doesn't effect anything. They have no agency over their relationships and whether or not they like someone. And there is a total of one choice which I would say truly affects the game long term (maybe you can argue two if you say a meaningful decision with long reaching consequences can happen an hour before the game ends) and even making that choice won't really sour Lucanis or Neve against you fully.

I've mentioned a few times that veilguard companions have no line in the sand; they're very maluable to just...whatever Rook tells them. None of them have strong opinions about magic, religion, race, culture, society. Is that agency? Is it agency to water down a character so they have no stance on anything? Can a companion HAVE agency if they don't have any real negative opinions ever? If they never truly get to be influenced by the world to make decisions for themselves?

Each companion has a choice of two endings and Rook makes them for the companion in question. DA has done this kind of decision before (Bull comes to mind) but they've never followed such a formulaic system in which everyone looks to Rook at one moment and decides the fate of their lives (and in Bellaras case their people) from one decision the player makes. The companions don't push back against Rook for making a choice they dislike or regret letting Rook make for them. When you chose to kill Avelines husband for her she is pissy at you YEARS later for making that decision for her in the moment. In veilgurd there is just. Nothing. They lack any real agency in the narrative at all that can last beyond the scene they're in.

This I think is particularly aggregious with Bellara and Taash; Bellaras agency in the narrative is completely bulldozed by the fact that Rook is allowed to decide whether or not she keeps the archive spirit; something with deep significance to the Dalish/her culture. There's an excellent post about how this is akin to book burning even if DA didn't mean for it to be. You can just tell her to get rid of it and she does! No regrets! Because her culture is never truly at the forefront of her storyline it's viewed as something tangential to who she is; something she can easily discard if you tell her to. Is that agency? She doesn't get mad at you for any particular decision, is that agency?

And then Taash...God Taash deserved so much better. They're living a story about lack of binaries and yet every single choice is about forcing them in one. Taash says they're happy being multicultural at the beginning of the story and you slowly but surely strip that from them and you're FORCED to do so. Is that agency for them? Is that what you think giving characters agency Is? Is that not one of the more racist/insensitive options Bioware has EVER placed before a player.

Davrin spends the narrative learning there is more to him than having to die at the end of a hard fight; he becomes a father, and allows his love of Assan to guide him in the sense that Assan acts as a mirror; just as the griffins can be reframed as protectors of Arlathan rather than just wardens doomed to die so can Davrin...but then they decided that Davrin should be up as the choice of who dies and not only that but they made that decision because they thought players would find it hard to chose between ASSAN and Harding not Davrin and Harding. Which. Is gross. I do think Davrins storyline is handled the best out of everyone which is why he's my favourite, but the ending just adds a bad taste to my mouth.

Neve, Dorian, Mae and the Black Divine are happy to leave their countries future political situation to a complete outsider no questions or disagreements mentioned. Is that uhhh. Is that agency?

Even Solas is stripped of any agency in this narrative; Mythal made him do it! If she says he can stop he will! What? Where did THAT come from? How uninteresting does that make Solas?

As for if the Veilguard companions have power or are in positions of power....I guess? Maybe? Neve can be the leader of a smuggler gang (don't think too hard about what they might smuggle in the slave capital of the world) which is a position of power. Or an...inspiration? Which gives her very little concrete steps towards actually helping docktown. Lucanis can lead the crows I guess? That's powerful...altho he doesn't seem to want the position or be able to refuse it or even complain about it. We have no idea or clue what happens to Harding, Davrin, Taash after the game but hey maybe that's because they could all be dead.

The characters ARE powerful ill give you that. We have some immensely powerful mages in our party and I LOVE every scene where Neve throws up a sheild or places herself as a shield to protect her friends. I wish we'd got to see more of Bellaras science and tinkering smarts but what we get is GREAT. But having a powerful character isn't the same as a character having agency in their story or being able to effect meaningful change.

So yeah. I mean. Obviously bad faith anon straw manning me because I dared to have an opinion about a game they happen to like (and liking the game is fine! I like parts of the game! I think the characters deserved better but hey ho). But I think it's interesting to think about agency and power in this narrative because....I don't think anyone actually gets much of it. Certainly not in comparison to previous DA characters like Blackwall, Leliana, Viv, Zevran, Fenris, Anders, Merrill, Isabela etc.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

Me, when Sebastian joins my party for the first time: Okay, this time I'm not going to forget about you, Sebastian. I'm going to make an effort to use you a lot this playthrough so I can better understand you.

Also me, immediately forgetting about Sebastian while finishing Act 2 and making it halfway through Act 3 before I finally notice his Faith quest: ......................Oh. Right. My bad.

[felassan]

DA:TV spoilers/long post under cut. This post is a continuation of [this post], [this post] and [this post].

Another new Dalish clan name dropped, clan Nuvenis. :) Bellara says that she thinks Nuvenis are a clan that wander Ferelden. And another Sabrae clan reference! In the next dialogue line, Harding says of Sabrae,

"Oh, yeah! The Sabrae clan would show up occasionally to trade in my village." [in the Hinterlands]

Dumat's Toad maybe? 👁️ (see prev posts)

Cassandra Pentaghast, My Lady Paladin, My Everything, My Moon and Stars reference..🥺 I'm sorry to learn that her uncle Vestalus has died in the years since we last saw her. q.q

Lucanis discusses Zevran Arainai.

A carved rocking griffon undoubtedly made by Thom Rainier.

I liked that the information on how the Blight has been affecting and dealt with in Ferelden contained info on the Avvar and the Chasind as well as the Lowland Fereldans.

I wonder who leads the Marcher host. Acting Viscount Aveline? Prince Sebastian?

read in the meta sense, the "precious few" are our handful of beloved protagonists :')

The Formless One texts like Kai Leng

help, Antoine and Evka are so cute

These two missives are written by Vorgoth right? Vorgoth's subtitles has their words in capitals.

I was like oh! Elio Andante? for a moment til I remembered Veil Jumper Elio hh.

This is Bellara speaking when she's fixing the Lighthouse eluvian. unexpected Garrus Mass Effect.

No comment here other than this codex was rly funny :)

[rahabs]

Was there anything you liked about Veilguard?

The hair was an improvement over Inquisition's notorious fifty shades of bald. Emmrich had a lot of potential and was easily the best of what turned out to be bland, underdeveloped batch of companions that the game makes you coddle and affirm at every turn (or, in Taash's case, an insanely childish companion that I felt I had to babysit constantly). Davrin was also fine. The architectural design was beautiful to look at, even if the cities felt empty and stale. Some of the armour was nice, and an improvement on Inquisition. I wasn't a fan of some aspects of the CC (but that's more my general dissatisfaction with BioWare constantly issuing massive overhauls to the designs of elves and qunari, so it's not Veilguard-specific), but it was also a marked improvement over Inquisition. Combat was... fine. It got dull after awhile, but it was just your standard stuff. Nothing offensive. Solas' voice acting was great for the .5 seconds we got to see him. Some of the other characters were voiced well.

As I've said, my main issue just lies in the sterile, corporate writing--not just the companions. My dissatisfaction also extends to the general culling of roleplay options (and some of the reasons why they were cut--namely, because a certain head writer was against players being able to do things he personally didn't approve of, and yes, it's common knowledge as Weekes was vocal on social media about it for years), the rampant lore issues (which BioWare has always struggled with in this franchise; lore consistency is not Dragon Age's strength), the coddling and hand-holding (not just for companions but for all major plot points; it's like the game thinks we're all stupid toddlers who need everything spoon-fed and told to us in the most simplistic terms, leaving no room for nuance or discussion), and just how... demeaning a lot of this game felt, I suppose? Someone pointed this out once and it stuck with me, but this game feels more like it was designed for "lonely people who really like found family fanfiction and project way too hard onto interactive media." Everything's just constant affirmation, constant "how-are-yous" from Rook to the companions; you cannot disagree with a companion or risk hurting their pixel-feelings, even when the companions are objectively acting like arseholes. It kills the roleplay aspect BioWare has always been famous for.

Editing this response I gave to someone else on this post, because I should have expanded originally:

[…] I think part of the reason Veilguard fails is that, unlike DA2, in trying to cater to that “found family” crowd and recreate the feeling people got with DA2 especially, the writers forgot a crucial aspect of what makes found family dynamics work, or what makes them feel worthwhile to the audience: the conflict.  Part of the impact with DA2 is it takes time—literal years—for Hawk to help build that dynamic, and there are serious differences of opinions and many arguments, whether between Hawk and one of the companions, Fenris and Anders, Isabella and Aveline, Fenris and Merrill, Anders and Merrill, Aveline and Merrill, Sebastian and Anders, Hawk and their sibling (whether Bethany or Carver), et al, etc.  Can you imagine if Fenris and Anders had had one minor disagreement and Hawk held their hands and went, “I see you’re feeling a lot of big emotions about this, are you okay, maybe you should try getting along and seeing things from his point of view?” and that was that? Because that’s essentially what Veilguard does, and it’s part of why the game rings so hollow and the found family dynamic seems so contrived: it feels unearned. It is unearned.

In the end Rook feels more like a therapist to a bunch of whingey thirteen-year-olds than a leader of professional adults, and the sterile writing as well as the writers' deeming determination to coddle their audience just makes this M-rated game feel G-rated, and not in a good way. In the risk of going into spoilers, I'm not going to rant about the Executors (though know I hate them so very much) or about the whole thing with Southern Thedas (yes I'm mad, because it's so unbelievably lazy), but so many aspects of Dragon Age's lore was just... watered down to the extreme in this game.

Also, the fact that they turned the Antivan Crows, of all things--you know, the same Antivan crows who purchase and recruit child slaves, who kill them if the deviate, whom we've spent three games going "man, you guys are kind of nasty, aren't you" at, etc--into this soft, fluffy, weird little uwu family unit really stood out to me as a symptom of this game's overall problem, which is, again, the infantile writing and the overall issue of over-sanitisation. Everything has to be uwu family friendly and nice and no one can ever have bad thoughts or do bad things or be mean! Good vibes only! I mean, we spent years being told about Tevinter and its legacy of slavery, particularly in Minrathous, and there's none of that in this game. Just more good vibes because can't risk anyone being upset or encountering challenging narratives!

Also, a petty grievance: BioWare also failed to improve on the issues with the dialogue wheel from Inquisition, meaning you'll choose an option and then Rook says something completely different. Again.

I'm just so thoroughly disappointed in it.

[saltyowlets]

Both things can be true- there is systematic corruption in many of the DA organizations that use and abuse people for whatever means they deemed as moral but you can still love and care for the individuals within the those systems so as long as you can look at them with a critical eye.

Critical eye here means to look and acknowledge that this character's view points and opinions are skewed by the organization they may come from. What they believe is true, whether about others or themselves, may not be 100: correct.

DA has a lot of unreliable narrators and npcs. No one has the full picture, and no one has an absolute truth. Alistair, Cassandra, Dorian, Aveline, and Leliana, to name a few, are characters who we were sure to understand the world they lived in but were proven wrong- maybe even naive.

You may ask- isn't unreliable narrators/npcs the norm in a video game? Well, not entirely. Usually, the unreliable is placed on the player, who enters the game with a limited amount of information. This gets built upon by multiple sources of lore and information- npcs and documents in the video game medium. Yet what happens when even npcs aren't telling the whole truth, not out of ill will but because of the bias they might hold?

That's why DA is so interesting, at least for me.

Even the Codex is not to be 100% trusted because those are written with specific writers and readers. These codexes have intention in what they say. Some even contradict others on purpose because of who is writing.

DA is a moving world with moving people who have a whole life before their appearance in the games. What they believe is true may not be the full truth.