#not with a new chapter of eso coming up which could bring the fandom back in at least half of its original glory

[littlegalerion]

Let me make it critically clear, I don't care if I get Black Listed or Canceled for saying any of this either.

No one is normalizing what Divayth Fyr did in the original Morrowind.

But a lot has changed since the original Morrowind dropped. We now know the person behind a lot of the writing and humor- not a great guy. He's literally responsible for dividing the Elder Scrolls Fandom for YEARS over the dumbest reasons, leading to so much bullying online.

Since then, Divayth Fyr has evolved. The whole daughter wives thing was scrubbed away in Legends, and in ESO he is a fantasticly fun unhinged NPC. I personally hope for a full-blown Morrowind remake one day where the daughter wives detail is done away with completely. Until then, I just pretend it's already gone.

One thing you need to understand, in the fantasy genre, is that everything is recycled material. I guarantee something you enjoy in fantasy was once a part of something problematic, but has since then been updated and fixed.

If this whole thing is not just about the old and outdated daughter wives aspect, but about his playboy nature or foxy grandpa vibes, well:

1.) The majority of the Elder Scrolls fandom are not minors. The games themselves are rated for mature audiences. They aren't meant for minors no more than GTA 5 is. This is an adult space, with ADULTS being interested in ADULT NPCs. Most of us are hitting our 30s, if not our 40s or mid 40s. Divayth Fyr...is not that old to us.

2.) If Silver Foxes or Foxy Grandpas aren't to your taste, then leave. No one is forcing you to consume the content. If you're a minor, WHY are you even here?

3.) If Divayth Fyr was/or presented as a woman, and had the same habit of dating around or being a hyperflirtateous person, no one would say a word. Been there, done that with the whole Almalexia drama that was on here about 3 years ago. Don't be sexist.

4.) If asshole energy characters aren't your vibe, then LEAVE once again. They obviously aren't for you so why are you consuming the content? Again, 3 years ago this entire conversation was happening but in regards to Abnur Tharn. If you like them, you like them. If you don't, you don't. End of story.

Been there and done that with being bullied for liking an UPDATED Divayth Fyr. Not going to let that happen to other content creators when the character is finally taking off on a better note at last.

[boethiah]

No! Lyris was one of my favs! I haven't been playing eso for a while now since my laptop was broken (video card decided to die on me and I'm not spending 300 euro on a 7 year old laptop). Recently got a new pc and wanted to get back into eso but I keep hearing things that make me want to reconsider that..

like everyone has their own opinions i suppose but for me personally the last two chapters (elsweyr and skyrim) were just not worth the money. elsweyr was resoundingly mediocre up until dragonhold, which was actually a very good dlc but that’s cancelled out by the fact that it marked ESO picking up the reprehensible practice of putting the ending to a plotline in a dlc you have to pay separately for. skyrim was not only mediocre but also flagrantly racist (the entire dlc is basically anti-indigeonous vitriol, here’s one quest as an example). it seemed like elsweyr and skyrim both relied on fan loyalty in order to be appealing, by bringing back fan-faves (elsweyr + skyrim) and pandering to nostalgia for previous games (skyrim, rather than even trying to make plotlines and quests that could stand up on their own. and now with eso:oblivion bringing back lyranth and having a new “year of x” series, i can only see this pattern continuing, with more mediocre and lazy plotlines that will nonetheless scrape by on people’s recent nostalgia for oblivion. i’m betting right now there’ll be a character whose name is something like vartin heptim who’s a bookish priest with a dark past that ends up sacrificing himself to help the vestige, just like eso:skyrim had serana svana

sorry for making this into a long rant but ESO is really in a long downwards spiral and i see no sign of it stopping any time soon. like hell at least elsweyr had a cool new zone and cool new lore-- skyrim literally reused tesV’s maps and introduced no new lore besides “the nords are justified in being racist to this one group because uhhhhh they’re nords haha see even lyris does it. fuck natives.” so eso:oblivion just seems like another year of seizing onto the fandom’s flavour of the month and using it to get out of coming up with something engaging and original. unless you’re playing for the social aspect and have friends to do dungeons with there’s just so many better things you could be doing with your time

[daggerfall]

Why people hate meridia? Really i don't know what happened about her and Daurien Gautier, i would be glad if you could explain to me :)

I have a paranoid suspicion this is bait but whatever, fine, you can have it.

There’s like two general reasons, the first being her in the lore and the second being her actions in eso.

In the lore, going all the way back to the time of the Ayleids, Meridia was the one who backed them in their fight against the humans they were enslaving. Particularly, she backed Umaril the Unfeathered (who you may remember from the Oblivion DLC) in his fight against Pelinal Whitestrake. Pelinal also sucked, but he was fighting alongside Alessia the Slave Queen to free her people. The Ayleids sucked and were an incredibly cruel people, so Meridia helping them is not great.

In the lore as well, Meridia is known to “purify” her servants, making them immortal but also taking away their free will. She also does this as a punishment to those who break their vows to her, and just in general. We see this in the dungeon “Depths of Malatar”, where she enslaves the Imperials who went to loot it, as well as keeping her Ayleid worshippers “alive” for thousands of years in service protecting half of the Wrathstone for some unknown reason. I believe it is implied she wished to use it someday, but dont quote me on that.

And in the lore again, Meridia has been known to “collect” people, being called the Daedric Prince of Greed in the Illiac Bay. We can arguably see this again with the Purified Imperials in DoM.

And finally in the lore, Meridia’s feud with Molag Bal has resulted in her sacrificing the lives of her own worshippers on the regular just to spite him. When Molag Bal’s forces were attacking a city of her worshippers (the Hollow City), she used the portals they were coming in from to move her city into Coldharbour. Molag Bal could not touch the city, but she moved/displaced all of her loyal followers into another princes realm just to stick it to her enemy. Every single inhabitant of that city either died from being placed outside the protection of the city, or eventually left the city due to being sick and tired of being trapped in there/Oblivion and eventually died. The only survivor was the last Ayleid king, who had been being held and tortured the entire time before his rescue via the Vestige. So a few thousand years.

Now in the games, particularly ESO, it is a popular belief that Meridia was the one who originally led the Vestige to the Worm Cult where they were killed, and is the kickstarter for the events of you being the Hero. The Hooded Figure looks shockingly like the Groundskeeper, has the same voice, and has a vested interest in getting someone powerful to have a deep hatred of Molag Bal and the Worm Cult and be on her side. A lot of people don’t take kindly to being led to their torture and death. Though this is a theory, not confirmed canon, but fandom interpretation is powerful.

Meridia also did not tell the Vestige she was Meridia until just before the fight against Molag Bal, playing with the Vestige like a chess piece in her own fight against her enemy. A lot of people don’t take kindly to being manipulated and used, even if it was against a common enemy. 

As for Darien, Meridia created Darien to be her champion on Nirn. She let him believe he was just a normal Breton his entire life during ESO. At the end of the main quest, Meridia does not return Darien to the rest of the group, and instead takes him to her realm and keeps him there. A lot of us players, as well as NPCs, cared greatly for Darien, and very much dislike Meridia for that. 

Darien writes from the Colored Rooms that he wanted to come home, a letter we can show to his friend Gabrielle (who it is strongly hinted he loved and who loved him back).

We don’t see Darien again until Summerset, when Meridia sends him there to help stop the daedric triad. Meridia did tell him the truth about who and what he was, to some degree, but not everything. When Meridia first talks about Darien, she expressed distaste for how he had changed having met the player. He had a singular purpose, but now he... cares. Meridia does not like her servants having their own freewill and thoughts. 

Darien has to sacrifice himself at the climax of the main story. Once that quest is over, you can find a letter again from him, warning us not to trust Meridia. Just one tiny bit from “Words of the Fallen” “I need to tell you something about Meridia. She's a deceiver. She promised that if I served her faithfully, I'd earn my freedom. She never told me that freedom was just another word for the void. Don't trust her. Don't trust any of the Daedric Princes. Not ever.” I highly recommend reading all of Words of the Fallen btw. 

So! Meridia promises freedom to her most loyal champion, and then takes it away after he does his job. Those who like Darien once again very much dislike Meridia for this.

In Dragonhold, there is a sidequest where you find someone dead next to what looks like Meridia’s Beacon. A letter on him implies that Meridia is looking for a new champion, one who will not betray her, implying that Meridia thinks Darien betrayed her. We know from Words of the Fallen that Darien sacrificed himself for the player, not Meridia. Meridia does not like that Darien cares about the player. 

You can bring the letter to the dead khajiit’s wife, who says she is going to throw the stone in the lake. But if you talk to her again, she says that she thinks she’s going to hold onto it now, implying that she thinks she will be able to hear those same voices as him, and that she might take up the champion mantle.

The world boss quest giver in Southern Elsweyr talks about his own issues with Meridia, being a people collector and possibly having some past trauma with her/her cult.

And in Greymoor, Meridia's temple (mount kilkreath) is attacked by the Icereach Coven's harrowstorm, which steals the life energy of people and either kills them, turns them into mindless passive zombies, or feral vampires known as harrowfiends. It was mostly her priests and pilgrims that were attacked. Meridia did nothing to protect her followers or purge this corruption from even the inside of her temple. Many followers lost their faith that day.

All of this together, and the sneaking suspicion that she is not done with yet in ESO, makes a lot of us not only dislike her, but not trust her at all. Zenimax brought up Darien for Valentines Day, keeps bringing him and Meridia up in DLC, has her featured greatly in the main quest and a major chapter DLC...

It’s less an outright hatred of her. Believe me, I hate Molag Bal significantly more than I “hate” Meridia. I tend to take on my OCs beliefs and feelings as I play them, and my own main character was in a relationship with Darien and hates all daedra. Also she gets brought up more in recent DLC and thus is more of a relevant topic than Molag Bal. So I tend to post a lot about Meridia in less than positive lights. It’s more than I take issue with her being so connected to slavery and manipulation of mortals, yet being painted in a benevolent or even good light by a lot of the lore. I take issue with people who ignore the fact she is featured very prominently in recent games and accuse anyone who talks about disliking her of misogyny for not being equally or more loud about their dislike of other, worse daedric princes, regardless of if they do or do not. I take issue with people who romanticize her slavery or call her a “feminist icon” solely because they don’t like Darien (or me. That’s another reason). But that’s more of a specific tesblr community issue rather than “legit reasons in game or lore to not like Meridia”.

Overall, Meridia is a daedric prince. They’re not good or bad by mortal standards because they don’t ascribe to mortal defined morals. They do what they do because they must. It is their realm, their sphere of influence. Meridia started out as the Daedric Prince of Greed in early games, a collector of people, and her hatred of undead and Molag Bal are extreme. The fact that she is more present in ESO, a game I play on the regular and that gets updated multiple times a gear, means that people will talk about her more. When I was deeply into Skyrim, I talked about my dislike of Hermaeus Mora a lot. When I was deeply into Oblivion (for a short while), I talked about my dislike of Mehrunes Dagon. And when I am thinking about Morrowind, I end up talking about my dislike of Azura and the Tribunal. She isn't necessarily better or worse than other Princes, just more of a hot topic in the ESO side of the fandom than other Princes.

If this was sent in good faith then I apologize for saying it felt like bait. If it is bait, then here. Take it and start raving about what an awful misogynist I am. I await my callout post.