#rambly DDW

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Dragon Age: Lore reminder

With Veilguard coming out this year, it is time to remind people once more how Dragon Age lore works. Dragon Age lore is written like a historical document, this means that reading ANY piece of lore requires you to do some source criticism. Every piece of lore in DA has an author and that author has a bias. Whether it's the Chantry's take on the Fade, Dalish keeping their mages a secret, Tevinter nobles denying blood magic, etc. When reading DA lore, you must also look at the source of that lore. Who said it? Who or what is it about? What is the relationship between the author and the subject? Is there information you -know- the author got wrong? This applies to the characters as well, they can be wrong, prejudiced, predicting doom, etc. So before you blame Bioware for getting their lore wrong, please make sure the actual lore is wrong and not the source.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Social Darwinistic people are interesting to study, because their thinking relies on a very faulty perception of humanity. Basically, they see living as a competition. Not just survival, everything is a race to the top. Even things that don't actually benefit them.

It is from these people that the whole 'alpha,beta,etc' male thing comes from. What makes it interesting is that the truest alpha is someone who is alone both socially and emotionally. The same people also think the only reason we have a society that cares for the weak is because of the laws. At times those laws are treated as stifling. This is best seen in how in some post-apocalyptic movies/games/comics the lone wanderer is treated as the truest expression of personhood. While any effort to rebuild society is doomed to fail because people are selfish and with no government they don't have to follow laws anymore.

Social Darwinists have more in common with big cats than social predators. They are alone, they want to be alone, and they will remain alone.

them: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST MEANS HUMANS MUST BE INDIVIDUALLY SELF-SUFFICIENT AND COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT

biologist:

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

I don't think any series of games has ever portrayed letting go of revenge and growth as paramount to living as Project Moon's games. Because in all of them (Lobotomy Corporation, Library of Ruina, Limbus Company), the way to get the best ending is to go through the characters' issues and find peace for them. What makes this stand out from many other games where the golden ending is everyone working together, is that going through these issues is not easy nor is the end result always happy. But it is necessary if the characters want to move on.

For example, Roland and Angela both have very solid reasons for their non-Best Ending actions. Angela is sick being treated as a tool and lesser, especially after the torture that was Lob Corp. And Roland lost everything dear to him because of Angela's actions, after he had just gotten to open up to someone. Library of Ruina doesn't deny that both have their reasons, it instead asks both if reaching that goal truly is worth it and if it would make the characters happy? And, is making others suffer what you suffered truly justified? In the best ending, both Angela and Roland find that they have more to live for and other ways to express themselves than violence. In Limbus Company, each Sinner must wrestle with their issues and let go of something harmful. Ishmael letting go of her revenge, Don letting go of her father's delusions, etc.

[purkinje-effect]

I’ve been wanting to redo the cover art for First Instar for some time now, and I finally let myself. Hopefully it scans visually as a high rise office. Rambling under the cut.

If you’re interested in The Anatomy of Melancholy, the most recent chapter’s always pinned on my blog, and a table of contents link is at the top of it. All likes and reblogs welcome. (Extensive CWs for horror esp. body horror, drug use, insects, and miles of characters with grey-to-scalding karma including the MC. I try to label CWs as thoroughly as possible at the beginning of each chapter: do heed them. There’s two DDW chapters in First Instar, and I mean that warning very strongly, especially as I illustrate these things from time to time. This fic is not suitable for minors or the squeamish.)

I didn’t break up AoM by Instar until about halfway through Second Instar. Lexington & Concord was supposed to be a placeholder until I thought of something better. Location wordplay’s going to be the common tie for all five Instars, I think, and I like this subtle change a lot.

I really liked the original 2019 cover when I did it, but I didn’t think it was all too representative of the fic itself. Too, it’s the first book of the pentalogy: it’s deserving of something a little more intense than what I had, now that I’m more capable of putting it together. That, and I really needed to include the visual detail that he’s a wheelchair user. For being one myself, I sure don’t draw them as often as I’d like.

I’d never really been happy calling the DDW chapters “Rexford Press” because it suggests ‘Choly ends up with a printing press in Goodneighbor, and at this point I seriously doubt it. The Rexton Nova’s his typewriter, owing to his Naked Lunch roots.

I promise I’ll do a revision pass soon and add footnotes and author’s notes to the first two Instars. Thanks for sticking with me almost five years now!

[pilotheather]

 idk what crawled into my skull and made me NEED to ramble abt all this again . i need to follow more ddw blogs so i can vent my Nonsense thru here more but i simply dont.... Foolish of me <3

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Well he still wanted to take down the Veil, we just interrupted him moving the Evanuris to a safer spot so they wouldn't come back. Basically making a safety save.

But to answer your question; The man is not only bad at communicating and letting others in, he is also stubborn and refuses to give up once he has decided he wants to do something. It took Coryfish Blight savescumming, nearly all of the south becoming a warzone, a year with the Inquisition's motley crew and potentially Lavellan romancing him for Solas to go "Wait, these are actually real people!?" And he STILL decided to go off alone, not trusting his friends to help him and then creating a situation where the Inquisitor has to give up their arm powers and gets the worst impression of him. Enough that everyone of the companions, even Spirit!Cole, is like 'we need to stop him.' As far we can see, Solas is alone doing the ritual. He has his spies but he can't trust them to help him. When Varric tries to get him to stop, Solas doesn't even try to say that he is NOT doing that and in fact he is putting the Evanuris into a safer box. He lets Varric and the rest think he is bringing down the Veil at that moment. Which means they will try anything to stop him.

The funny thing is that his two modern tries at destroying the Veil have both gone awry because he didn't consider other people to also have plans.

I'm confused why, if Solas just wanted to move the Evanuris to a stronger prison, why he didn't just SAY that?

[papakennmedia]

PAPAKENN RAMBLES: "MIDNA, SCALPERS, & DDW"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-R6BZlo32Q

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

One of my biggest petpeeves when it comes to xenofiction and xenofiction roleplay, is what I can only call the felinification of canines.

Whenever it comes to fighting, canines will often use their claws to scratch their foes or scar them. When it comes to biting, the damage is often muscle deep at the worst and the wounds mostly just bleed a lot.

This ignores so much of what makes canines so deadly over giving them the same deadly traits as a feline. A (wolf relative) canine can easily break the bones of their foes in a single bite and often the deadliest thing they can do is not let go. As for claws, while they can leave shallow scratches, canine claws are dull and are used for digging and running. Feline claws are sharp because they do not use them for running or digging, literally keeping them safe until they need to be used. I understand that internal injuries are often a step too far for most media, and that broken bones and bruises aren't hardcore enough. But I still think there could be a balanced depiction of a canine that uses their actual anatomy and doesn't just paste feline traits on them.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

One of the things that Guild Wars 2 really masters, that I don't often see in other setting, is treating species and an individual as two different things. And that no species is truly evil. You can see this in the core game with how only a few factions are made up of one species. Even then, those are usually the 'evil' faction within the species. All others can have Charr, Asura, Norn, humans and Sylvari as random mooks.

Through the Living World story, we also get to see members of the 'bad' factions redeem themselves. Flame Legion is now trying to be better and Gorrik was a former Inquest member. It doesn't even stop at playable species, because by Living World season 4's end, the Awakened are free from Joko and resume their lives with their families. Cue a lot of complaining from people whose parents are now undead and nagging them. Or, with the latest Living World story over, the Kryptis. What at first seemed like mindless horror hordes are actually just people. You get to see these creatures that look like standard baddies try to paint or get nervous over jumping from a diving board. I think this is great, because it goes into the message of unity the game is about. Every species has their arseholes and saints, even those that at first seem evil.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

There is a sort of sad hilarity to how Werewolf the Apocalypse exposes people's indifference towards nature, thinking environmental preservation and such is childish and naive or just outright nihilistic doomerism. I have seen so many takes that boil down to a refusal to believe things can be fixed, feeling fixing things in fantasy is unrealistic or don't want things to be fixed at all. Or they ask what is horrifying about nature and its loss ("Hippie Horror")? Wanting personal horror instead. And often, these reactions are very telling.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

The subversion Murder Drones does with the bad boy and nice girl trope is already funny. But it gets better when you consider what N (and other disassemblers) are.

(Since N is heavily associated with dogs and dogs are basically modded wolf-like creatures, I'm using canine behaviour here.) Even if artificially created, the DD are apex predators. They (ideally) live in a group and even hunt together. The way N acted towards his prey is no different from what a wolf or any other canine hunter would do. Find prey, kill it and then eat it and share it with the group. No hard feelings, it is what it is. But what is often forgotten is that apex predators, especially highly social ones, are far less serious when it comes to their own group. When N greets Uzi after she smacked him with the arm, he sees her not as prey but as a squadmate and therefore he treats her like a peer. So instead of this dark and brooding loner, Uzi gets to see a trusting, positive and playful social butterfly. Because N clearly doesn't see hunting and eating worker drones as a cruel curse he must stoically bear, it is something he does to eat and make his squadmates happy. There is no mental dissonance, these are just different roles he fills. This (alongside being treated better, self-preservation is still important) makes N's heel-face-turn so easy for him. Once he sees Uzi not as prey but as a friend who helped him, he trusts her judgement and goals and mainly politely asks if she is sure. Because Uzi is now squad, and you trust your squad. Narratively, this makes it easy to justify why N could switch so quickly from an active threat to a loyal follower. People understand that a dog can bite, but it can also be your best friend. Since N is compared to a dog, the same applies to him.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

I say this as someone who really likes J and loves the depth she has. But N was never, ever, EVER going to get J's respect. If you look at their interactions, it is clear that J's dislike is not because N is bad at hunting or is too soft. He is an efficient killer who was only stopped by a laser rifle and the situation becoming emotionally complicated.

J's dislike is, I think, mostly a holdover from their manor days (N getting Tessa's attention is a common headcanon for it) and because J is stressed beyond belief by the Absolute Solver's way of holding her in line. Never mind that, like Tessa, the Solver seems the most positive towards N.

It isn't rare for people who work hard to get where they are to feel slighted when someone gets to the same position with less work. This is peak J.

I also feel it should be noted that N himself is making every effort he can to placate J. He is not fighting back, he is always positive towards her and he is not a bad hunter.

It is a sad situation, especially when you add V isolating N further, but the relationship was always going to remain toxic between them.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

To be fair to Inquisition, Calpernia and Samson were the 'face' of Cory for most of the game. And I think, had he been given the chance, Cory would have been an interesting villain. After all, he and the Inquisitor had the same goal: To make Thedas stable again. Just their methods differed. Back to Veilguard, though. I agree pretty much with all of your analysis. I do want to voice some thoughts on why Veilguard's story in broad strokes did not work. For one, unlike every other game and DLC, Veilguard had no real surprises. All it did was build upon what Origins, DA2 and Inquisition already revealed and make no large lore revelations of its own. We already knew the Evanuris fought the Titans, we just learned more details on how. It was pretty clear Solas imprisoned the Blight with the Evanuris. The only new information was how much Solas himself did. But that, in my opinion, made him do a bit too much for one character while leaving only your basic villain stuff for Elgy and Ghilly. This lack of surprises also applies to the time-honoured tradition of one of the mage companions doing something unexpected. Veilguard's mages are all honest and trustworthy. This all makes me think Veilguard should have been to Inquisition what Awakening was for Origins. A longer DLC with a new main character that still tied to Inquisition's themes/story.

A Spoiler-Filled Rant about Veilguard

This isn't spoiler-intensive, per se, but there is one thought that has been rattling through my brain through the entirety of playing Veilguard. And it has to do with how villains are presented in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II, versus how they are presented in Inquisition and Veilguard.

(Minor) Spoilers to follow under the cut.

Dragon Age: Origins presents the Darkspawn horde as a traditional fantasy villain trope. It's easy to understand, easy to get the depth of the problem, but it's difficult to counter. Because the entirety of Dragon Age: Origins isn't about fighting the Darkspawn. It's about fighting the problems that get in the way of you fighting the Darkspawn.

You need to gather allies, and it's in the gathering of allies that you encounter your trials and Hero's Journey. And they are all poetic, in a way.

In Redcliffe, to recruit the local Arl, you find him poisoned, further complicated by his son being possessed by a demon. Your attempt to recruit a political ally with ties to the Chantry is confounded both by politics and blood magic.

For the Elves, self-styled guardians of nature, you find them at war with nature itself.

For the Dwarves, stalwart fighters bound by tradition, you are forced to decide for them to either break with tradition, or become enslaved by it.

There's a theme to each ally, and a cleverness to your struggles. And while the Darkspawn are your primary enemy, the end goal of the campaign, the ultimate antagonist of the story is Loghain, a beautifully written enemy (I refuse to call him a 'villain') because he is very complicated in his motivations and goals. He has reasons -- good reasons, albeit short-sighted and misguided -- for doing what he does. He is a patriot. And it is that patriotism that may ultimately doom his nation.

In Dragon Age 2, Meredith and Orsino are presented as the villains of the story. They have complicated motivations and reasons for doing what they do. Meredith wants to protect regular people from Mages and blood magic. Orsino wants to protect Mages from overzealous Templars.

But the antagonist of the story is ultimately Anders, your own party member, who knocks over the board and makes an overcomplicated mess into a veritable clusterfuck. He damns himself and all other Mages by purposely making himself the villain of the story to begin a war. He seeks to make himself and all other Mages in Kirkwall martyrs so that others around the world will unite under one banner, declaring, "No more."

Whether or not what Anders does is Good or Evil is for every individual player to decide. Even if you side with him and try to defend the Mages from the wrath of the Templars, you can still come to the conclusion that his actions were Evil. There's nuance. It's great. Dragon Age 2 has a lot of flaws and some disjointed storytelling because of its format, but where it succeeds is in the questions the antagonist forces you to ask yourself.

And now we get to Inquisition and Veilguard.

They both have Solas. And they use Solas as a crutch. Inquisition does it in a clever way. You aren't aware that Solas is the Great Orchestrator. You think the villain is Corypheus, a D-tier villain with boring motivations and cliched dialogue.

Inquisition would have failed as a narrative if not for Solas. Corypheus was a good villain for a Dragon Age 2 optional DLC. He was a shit antagonist for a full game. He was bland, his goals were bland, his methods of achieving them were bland, and his allies were bland. Everything he did was Generic Fantasy white bread bullshit.

And that's okay. Because he wasn't the Actual Antagonist. Solas was. And I've seen so many interpretations and theories and reads over the years on what really defines Solas, that I can't help to feel that most of them are at least a little bit true.

Is he an Elf-supremacist? Maybe. Does he look down on Humans and Qunari? Debatable. Is he 'just trying to fix things he broke'? Probably. Is he living in the past, unable to move on? You bet.

And then we hit Veilguard.

And we know the main villain of this game is Solas. It was originally titled 'Dreadwolf', after all. But Solas is stuck in a prison of his own making for the majority of the game. So, instead, we get Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain.

And honestly, these two... Elgar'nan is Corypheus 2.0. Ghilan'nain is What if Corypheus Was Also Hojo from FF7.

We just had this formula last game. It *barely* worked. And it only worked in the end because of a surprise reveal. Solas was a complicated antagonist, to be sure, but it worked ultimately because we didn't know he was the antagonist.

So, now we're doing the exact same formula as Inqusition. Present a Very Boring Villain as the surface antagonist, but because the stakes need to be higher, we are given two Very Boring Villains as surface antagonists. And to really hammer in that the stakes are higher, hey, remember how Dragon Age: Origins was about fighting an Archdemon in command of a Blight? Well, now we have two Archdemons. At the same time.

And that's what Veilguard is ultimately trying to do. It's giving you everything you've seen before, but upping the stakes and fewer moral complications and poetic twists. There's no dramatic irony to be had here.

Elgar'nan's entire character arc can be summed up with one phrase:

"WHat DO yOU meAn yOU do NoT All WAnT To bE mY slAVEs?"

Ghilan'nain's:

"WHat Do yOU meAn yOU do NoT All WAnT To bE eXPerIMeNTs?"

We are given two entitled assholes as villains, whining they do not instantly get total and complete dominion over the entire world and all of reality, and are expected to take them seriously. There is no pathos, no sympathetic motivations, no nuance, nothing.

The only depth to any villainous character we get is in Solas. And all that work had already been done in Inquisition. Veilguard coasts on that. Some part of me hoped that maybe Elgar'nan wasn't 100% evil. That maybe some of what he was saying and what he was doing was right. That maybe the war with the Forgotten Ones led him down a dark path of hubris and tragedy. That Elgar'nan was trying to save the world from horrors beyond our comprehension. That Ghilan'nain was preparing us for a war we could not win. The Forgotten Ones, or the Forbidden Ones, or some other grand threat, could have been presented as a Reaper-equivalent Mass Effect style antagonist that they were preparing us against. We could have had that story.

We didn't get it.

We got two selfish nepo-babies instead. And then that final conclusion to the Solas 'problem.'

I've said before. I like Veilguard. I am not here to condemn the game. I don't want to sound like I hate what we got. But damn, we could have had so much more.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Why the Apocalypse in the title matters and how W5 fails to address it

Even if it is by this point a joke, all WoD games have a title what creature it lets you play and then one of the core elements of it.

Yet, it is odd that a werewolf game puts the end of the world as one of its most central concepts. After all, werewolves aren't really associated with the apocalypse in myths. The closest is Fenris-Ulf in Norse myths, but Fenris was a monstrous wolf, not a werewolf. Shouldn't Changing or Fury be a better descriptor?

Well, WtA's werewolves draw from older material than the movies and the focus is not on being a werewolf. The focus is on the state of the world, the way nature is being destroyed and such. In the game, being a werewolf is more akin to a spiritual guardian than a cursed being.

The Apocalypse in the title not only refers to the literal end of existence but to the little apocalypses happening every year. Species dying, people losing touch with their ancestral cultures, etc. WtA is about looking at the state of the world and feeling the horror of just how hard it is to fix it if not impossible. Never mind the sadly now very real horror of greed over care and ennui towards your fellow humans and nature.

This genuine approach and call to action has, of course, created an opposite reaction that calls WtA's tone childish. More recently, as we actually start seeing the effects of climate change, the reactions have also become ones of denial, apathy and fear of doing the wrong thing.

It is the latter that W5 shows the clearest in its depiction of the apocalypse.

The apocalypse in W5 is invisible to normal people and other supernaturals. At most, it is the fall of the garou nation as the climate change happening in the real world. Despite this, W5 is very clear about discouraging its PCs from taking action further than locally.

In effect, W5's apocalypse and what it wants the players to do about it is toothless. The game spends page space detailing what not to do, but very little on what to do and what the apocalypse looks like. Because it is afraid to take a stand, instead focusing on passive-aggressive remarks here and there.

W5, despite its blurb stating it is about striking back at pollution, isn't willing to have its PCs be eco-terrorists (though some do slip through) and actively calls direct action the wrong method.

It isn't just what W5 tells the PCs shouldn't do, it is also how much the PCs don't have to do. It's the end of the world as we know it and you can still go to McDonald's in peace. The world is lost and you still have to go to work. If we weren't told the apocalypse was raging, we'd assume it was still in the future. The game is, intentionally or unintentionally, saying that there is no need to do anything. Even if the world is ending, it won't inconvenience you.

To put things plainly, W5's apocalypse is the way it is so there won't be paid sick days for the employees. It is an end that preserves and protects the status quo.

Of course, an apocalypse that changes nothing is not really an apocalypse. Indeed, W5 wears the apocalypse label more out of legacy than any real intention of addressing it. It wants to focus on werewolf packs and caern tending, not something as serious as the fate of the world.

In fact, I'd say W5 doesn't want to be about the garou at all but instead about werewolves. It wants to be Werewolf the Fury.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

Murder Drones: Losing your artificiality

WARNING. Discussion of typical Murder Drones gore and fictional mental conditions. Take care.

There is a trope, pretty much as old as sci-fi itself, where the more one becomes a machine the less human they become. Shadowrun has it as a mechanic, Cyberpunk has its cyberpsychosis and there are many examples where a character forced into a machine body loses their emotions.

To become too much of a machine is to lose your touch with emotions and empathy. In the worst cases, even to your morals. A machine only does what it feels is logical.

So, what would happen if the situation was reversed? What if a machine suddenly started becoming more flesh?

Murder Drones discusses this with its titular drone type and with infected Solver Drones.

Now, the basic worker drone is a very human creature. They have emotions, they have faults and they often aren't logical. They are the concept of an AI replicating humanity put to its logical endpoint. However, even if Uzi mentions hormones, it is all simulated.

Sure, to them it feels real (and let's face it, a lot of our own functions are mostly our brain making stuff up), but it is all code and simulations. Something they could technically turn off at will.

What happens when a worker drone gains flesh through the Solver? If Murder Drones was playing this trope reversal straight, it would result in the drone in question becoming more 'real.'

In a way, that is what happens. But instead of the drones becoming more human in an emotional and moral sense, they instead become more human in a baser way. Or, rather, they become more like a flesh and blood animal. Just like humanity is at its core.

The Disassembly Drones and Solver Drones gain urges that are very real and cannot be turned off. They hunger, they seek out something to satiate themselves and they draw pleasure from the process.

The drones gain an id to their already present ego and super-ego. An id that pushes them to consume and revel in it. Yes, it is used to stall overheating, but the way it appears to affect the drones is clearly also tied to hunger.

While a human becoming more machine loses touch with emotions and empathy, a drone becoming more flesh loses parts of its autonomy. They are now driven by primal urges that affect how they think and how they act. And these urges have no 'off' switch.

This change to the primal is shown with the Disassembly Drones having animal parts (tails, wings, extra eyes, claws, etc.) and some Solver Drones literally creating fleshy parts for themselves.

The way the show depicts this goes into the horror of losing your bodily autonomy and control. But it also goes into how these instincts and urges change you as a person as readily as becoming a machine does.

One loses its humanity to cold logic, the other to primal urges. In both cases, what makes one human is gone.

Using machines as the baseline for a story of primal horror is clever because the wet body horror then stands as a stark contrast to the mechanical and clean default.

This theme of the flesh twisting machines is further depicted through the main villain. The Absolute Solver is a singularity, but everything around it draws more from demonic imagery than the horror of an evil AI. The Solver brings it the horrors of the flesh, wrapped in the guise of sci-fi.

Underneath the exterior of a megacorp and its killing machines, you find vampires, witches, demons and even a form of lycanthropy. Creatures of urban horror, of the flesh.

What makes it all interesting, is how we see Tessa combine the two first in the timeline. She dug up both drone corpses and human ones and combined them by giving her reanimated drones human hair. We also see in her room hints that she was interested in alchemy.

Neither machine nor beast can take such an action, it needs a human to show them how.

Murder Drones proves with its use of subversion and tropes of another genre, that a sci-fi story doesn't need cybernetics to depict the loss of humanity. Humanity's own primal nature can be just as effective.

[reikiajakoiranruohoja]

One Evil AI vs Evil AI match I'd REALLY love to see is Absolute Solver from Murder Drones vs AM from I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Not only are both very much their own people, but they are both also very petty, very vindictive AND willing to mentally torture people for fun. Especially as AS can in fact move about freely, while AM is stuck as an unmoving machine. Something the AS would rub on AM's 'face' eagerly. It would be a bloodbath, but a HECK of an entertaining one!