thenerasanethara

[thenerasanethara]

Happy Dragon Age day! I wanted to share a bit of appreciation for Dorian. He is dear to me. As someone who was raised in conservative family and culture, he helped me to overcome internalized homophobia and his story is really personal. He literally changed my life and IT'S NOT A JOKE. It's like everything society and family told me was a lie, it's like religious sayings were a lie, and it's FINE to love someone of same gender. People FEEL that way. And their experience reminds of mine. I'm so. Grateful.

[thenerasanethara]

Its extremely bizarre how veilguard utterly ignores dalish elves, when the whole game is about their GODS coming back. E&G shouldnt even need to corrupt people, they would absolutely have countless dalish and elven slaves flocking to them if soley for the purpose of fucking up human shit.

You have innumerable tevinter slaves who wouldnt need any convincing to join them just to see the world burn after being abused all their life and seeing countless friends and family die at tevinter hands. How fucking morally interesting and heartwrenching would it be to have to fight freed slaves who willingly joined the gods because all this shit, lets burn this shit world down and all the shem with it.

You have so many dalish who have been waiting, PRAYING a day like this would come, a day their gods came to them and said now its time to take thedas back, to take their rightful place once more. To handwave it off as "oh the gods dont sctually care abt elves" is stupid and makes no sense. Theyre tryinf to amass a force to kill everyone, what do you mean they wouldnt cate about the tens of thousands of willing fighters they wouldnt even need to corrupt, in all corners of thedas. They'd use them just as any other tool or weapon at their disposal.

Also i can barely count the veil jumpers as dalish. Theyre not a single clan, they have no keepers, they dont act like dalish and neither does bellara. Ive never heard her mention her clan, her traditions beyond the veil jumpers. And to have the veil jumpers trust non elven, non dalish outsiders with their operations, their peoples deepest most sacret artifacts and secrets is BONKERS

Like dont get me started on how there is just no spirituality AT ALL in this game. The game about GODS. Nobody cares that the elven gods are REAL and the maker isnt. Theres a single scene about it and hardly any of your companions give a shit, because the writers forgot that most people of thedas are religious, andrastian specifically. Everyones just kinda agnostic or atheist now i fucking guess. Its not ljke there have been multiple crusades because of religion in thedas.

Whatever

[thenerasanethara]

Its extremely bizarre how veilguard utterly ignores dalish elves, when the whole game is about their GODS coming back. E&G shouldnt even need to corrupt people, they would absolutely have countless dalish and elven slaves flocking to them if soley for the purpose of fucking up human shit.

You have innumerable tevinter slaves who wouldnt need any convincing to join them just to see the world burn after being abused all their life and seeing countless friends and family die at tevinter hands. How fucking morally interesting and heartwrenching would it be to have to fight freed slaves who willingly joined the gods because all this shit, lets burn this shit world down and all the shem with it.

You have so many dalish who have been waiting, PRAYING a day like this would come, a day their gods came to them and said now its time to take thedas back, to take their rightful place once more. To handwave it off as "oh the gods dont sctually care abt elves" is stupid and makes no sense. Theyre tryinf to amass a force to kill everyone, what do you mean they wouldnt cate about the tens of thousands of willing fighters they wouldnt even need to corrupt, in all corners of thedas. They'd use them just as any other tool or weapon at their disposal.

Also i can barely count the veil jumpers as dalish. Theyre not a single clan, they have no keepers, they dont act like dalish and neither does bellara. Ive never heard her mention her clan, her traditions beyond the veil jumpers. And to have the veil jumpers trust non elven, non dalish outsiders with their operations, their peoples deepest most sacret artifacts and secrets is BONKERS

Like dont get me started on how there is just no spirituality AT ALL in this game. The game about GODS. Nobody cares that the elven gods are REAL and the maker isnt. Theres a single scene about it and hardly any of your companions give a shit, because the writers forgot that most people of thedas are religious, andrastian specifically. Everyones just kinda agnostic or atheist now i fucking guess. Its not ljke there have been multiple crusades because of religion in thedas.

Whatever

[thenerasanethara]

Its extremely bizarre how veilguard utterly ignores dalish elves, when the whole game is about their GODS coming back. E&G shouldnt even need to corrupt people, they would absolutely have countless dalish and elven slaves flocking to them if soley for the purpose of fucking up human shit.

You have innumerable tevinter slaves who wouldnt need any convincing to join them just to see the world burn after being abused all their life and seeing countless friends and family die at tevinter hands. How fucking morally interesting and heartwrenching would it be to have to fight freed slaves who willingly joined the gods because all this shit, lets burn this shit world down and all the shem with it.

You have so many dalish who have been waiting, PRAYING a day like this would come, a day their gods came to them and said now its time to take thedas back, to take their rightful place once more. To handwave it off as "oh the gods dont sctually care abt elves" is stupid and makes no sense. Theyre tryinf to amass a force to kill everyone, what do you mean they wouldnt cate about the tens of thousands of willing fighters they wouldnt even need to corrupt, in all corners of thedas. They'd use them just as any other tool or weapon at their disposal.

Also i can barely count the veil jumpers as dalish. Theyre not a single clan, they have no keepers, they dont act like dalish and neither does bellara. Ive never heard her mention her clan, her traditions beyond the veil jumpers. And to have the veil jumpers trust non elven, non dalish outsiders with their operations, their peoples deepest most sacret artifacts and secrets is BONKERS

Like dont get me started on how there is just no spirituality AT ALL in this game. The game about GODS. Nobody cares that the elven gods are REAL and the maker isnt. Theres a single scene about it and hardly any of your companions give a shit, because the writers forgot that most people of thedas are religious, andrastian specifically. Everyones just kinda agnostic or atheist now i fucking guess. Its not ljke there have been multiple crusades because of religion in thedas.

Whatever

[thenerasanethara]

Its extremely bizarre how veilguard utterly ignores dalish elves, when the whole game is about their GODS coming back. E&G shouldnt even need to corrupt people, they would absolutely have countless dalish and elven slaves flocking to them if soley for the purpose of fucking up human shit.

You have innumerable tevinter slaves who wouldnt need any convincing to join them just to see the world burn after being abused all their life and seeing countless friends and family die at tevinter hands. How fucking morally interesting and heartwrenching would it be to have to fight freed slaves who willingly joined the gods because all this shit, lets burn this shit world down and all the shem with it.

You have so many dalish who have been waiting, PRAYING a day like this would come, a day their gods came to them and said now its time to take thedas back, to take their rightful place once more. To handwave it off as "oh the gods dont sctually care abt elves" is stupid and makes no sense. Theyre tryinf to amass a force to kill everyone, what do you mean they wouldnt cate about the tens of thousands of willing fighters they wouldnt even need to corrupt, in all corners of thedas. They'd use them just as any other tool or weapon at their disposal.

Also i can barely count the veil jumpers as dalish. Theyre not a single clan, they have no keepers, they dont act like dalish and neither does bellara. Ive never heard her mention her clan, her traditions beyond the veil jumpers. And to have the veil jumpers trust non elven, non dalish outsiders with their operations, their peoples deepest most sacret artifacts and secrets is BONKERS

Like dont get me started on how there is just no spirituality AT ALL in this game. The game about GODS. Nobody cares that the elven gods are REAL and the maker isnt. Theres a single scene about it and hardly any of your companions give a shit, because the writers forgot that most people of thedas are religious, andrastian specifically. Everyones just kinda agnostic or atheist now i fucking guess. Its not ljke there have been multiple crusades because of religion in thedas.

Whatever

[thenerasanethara]

DRAGON AGE 2

I spotted a most curious sight: a mighty ogre, vanquished! Who could perform such a feat? But now my curiosity is sated, and you are safe… for the moment. Is that not enough?

[thenerasanethara]

I’m sorry.

[thenerasanethara]

Leyendecker but Solavellan

[thenerasanethara]

Ten year jump to da:v?? its time for mom!vellan

[thenerasanethara]

Seems like I'm going on a trend of 'we made it' kisses

I'm kinda glad dav made me replay dao, I missed my boys a lot <33

[thenerasanethara]

Gonna try out sticker sheets for the first time! I wanted to work on a layout that fit thematically.

[thenerasanethara]

"The Dalish gifted an Eluvian to the Grey Wardens so we can get in Weisshaupt" is just so emblematic of my problems with the game, because you can tell--it feels to me--that the thought process was "We need to have an Eluvian in Weisshaupt, Eluvians are an Elven(TM) thing, the Dalish are the Elven(TM) faction, so let's just say they were the ones who gave one to the Grey Wardens".

The Dalish have been established over all three games as a people who have spent the last thousands of years desperately scrounging for whatever scraps of their culture they can find, a struggle that has cost them dearly as typified by Merrill's plight trying to restore a single Eluvian which had previously Blighted two of her clan mates (an Eluvian that she can't open or use, and doesn't actually know what it's for by the end of her quest line). Multiple Dalish in Inquisition are killed trying to regain their history ("The Knight's Tomb") or trying to prove themselves by regaining even a talisman related to their culture ("Someone to Lose"). They are an insular and guarded people because outsider interactions frequently invoke a heavy toll in Dalish lives, up to and including entire clans. And yet, we are supposed to believe in a single throwaway piece of dialogue that in the 10 years between Inquisition and Veilguard, the Dalish have (offscreen) gained enough access to Eluvians as a piece of technology that they can afford to just "gift" one to the Grey Wardens without explanation.

There are constant revelations of this kind where pre-established parts of the lore are just thrown out the window. Things that had great emotional weight or impact in previous installments of the series are used for cheap thrills or plot-hole fills without explanation, justification, or even gravitas from the game. You have a moment in one of Emmrich's quests where you stumble through a portal directly into the Fade that Hezenkoss opened in Blackthorne manor, and you're tasked with closing it again. All of this is done entirely without the Anchor or even an implied blood sacrificial ritual, and it is never commented as anything particularly groundbreaking (when going into the Fade physically through tearing a hole in it was a Big Fucking Deal in Inquisition). You encounter a Compassion spirit in a side quest investigating the deaths of citizens in Tevinter who were murdered by a demon of Despair, and it is strong enough to not only retain itself through sensing the (unanswered!) suffering that these people experienced, but it also resolves to protect others to keep them from the same fate (when Cole was so traumatized by a single person's death that he completely reshaped his entire being around them). So on and so forth. Don't even get me started on Bellara's comment that the ancient elves "made most of their buildings in the Fade".

I'm not asking for someone to hold my hand and spoonfeed me information. I frankly don't care if an obscure codex entry, a reddit AMA question, bluesky tweet, or headcanon exists somewhere to patch in or bandaid over all of the jarring details like this, because it doesn't change the fact that the game itself should be doing this. The game itself should be taking the time to explain this in a way that is not missable, the game itself should be taking these things seriously, it should recognize when it is doing contradictory things and rush to justify itself accordingly, because these are things the emotional beats of previous stories hinged on. Like, when the game has Taash say a line like "The Qun isn't a prison, you can leave if you want", it's the responsibility of the writers to show that this is Taash being misinformed, not because I'm too stupid to headcanon that this is the case, but because this line is a symptom of how the entire game's writing seems to have forgotten about the Ben-Hassrath as a thing that exists in this setting.

Previous Dragon Age games are no stranger to "We quietly removed Solas' network of agents and spies offscreen"-style writing, but it usually didn't feel like a constant deluge periodically uprooting my emotional investment and immersion. There's only so much I can take in good faith before I realize that this game was just not written with any care towards ensuring that the worldbuilding made sense and felt right to the player, leading to awkward backpedaling in reddit threads like "no the Crows haven't changed as an organization, these are just the unique Good Crows and we forgot to mention it".

I just can't look past this shit anymore.

[thenerasanethara]

We still making art out here!! In spite of it all!!!

And the Alistair rework is (finally) done 🫠 This one gave me by far the most trouble. I had to rework the lighting which made me have to pretty much repaint his armor AND I made the original painting on the wrong color profile and had to spend forever color correcting when switching it over to the right one 🥲

The Zevran rework is also already in progress (and going much more smoothly lol)

[thenerasanethara]

she tied you to a kitchen chair

she broke your throne

she cut your hair

[thenerasanethara]

I finally made one! Happy dragon age day everyone

(prints)

[thenerasanethara]

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[thenerasanethara]

My holy trinity 😩🙏